But for me, I thought you made a record, you got on a bus, went out and played your shows and made a lot of money. That was the way it was supposed to go down. But there's a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of early mornings, late nights, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away from home, being away from your family.
There were times I was told, 'You are too gay.' I turned down a lot of things because producers said they wanted me to be different. I said, 'It's not going to happen.'
Those who know me know I'm passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.
Anybody who knows me knows that I'm just here to put a smile on people's faces.
You can't live on last year, you can't live on the year before. I can't bring in my 13 Pro Bowls in the locker room and say, look at me. No. That is gone. That is the best thing about the game of football is that everybody starts over.
Any Latin dance, whether it be salsa, cha cha, samba, etc., is very sexy for me to see a woman do. Using your hips is the key.
Nothing will ever be as big as 'The Phantom of the Opera' for me.
I've always felt very much from a mixed culture - mainly English and French, but also Nigerian, Thai, Mexican. Everything's had its influence on me.
I had gone away from Twitter because before people had been so mean to me. Talking about my lisp and my enormous forehead and all these things. I do have a lisp, I do have a forehead I know you could land a plane on, it's no mystery to me. I just didn't have the skin for it.
I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, 'you are going to have to learn to do this,' and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother's life.
Winning fires me up.
No one was asking me to be on TV. So I made my own late-night TV talk show.
To me, my brand is luxury, it's art, it's women, it's raw, it's urban.
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
My wife tells me I need to learn to be more patient with my son.
Up until the last minute, it was art and drawing for me. That was the first real and natural thing I thought I was good at and loved to do. But I developed a similar kind of love for music.
Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.
My father raised me to build computers, hardware. Literally, as an 8 year old, I had a soldering iron and circuit boards, and this was in neighbourhoods that wouldn't have a whole lot of money or anything. And I figured out ways to just hustle.
My first trimester I was so exhausted. I could sleep 10 hours, then wake up, look in the mirror and still have eyes like a hound dog! I felt like the life was sucked out of me, no matter how much sleep I got. It was obvious that my body was really busy doing something else and 'beauty sleep' didn't exist anymore!
When I was 13, Eddie Murphy was to me what Chris Tucker was to 13-year-olds when I made 'Rush Hour.' And 'Rush Hour' really came out of the fact that I grew up watching 'Beverly Hills Cop' and '48 Hrs.'
Being on the 'Alex Cross' set, and watching and learning about and paying attention to everything that was going on there, I realized, 'Here is a moment for me to learn.'
I am going to get world-wide recognition from whoever wants it, and whoever wants to challenge me.
Unless someone physically tries to attack me, I don't care what anyone does.
Over my NFL career, I've had five head coaches who have helped me become better at my craft and have helped me become a better human being: Jim Mora, Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell, John Fox, Gary Kubiak.
I'm probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don't prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.
Oh, I am such a little piggy. Everyone is always mad at me because I eat so much. They're like, 'How are you so skinny?' I eat more than my husband!
All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.
I get a little sick of these New Yorkers who want me to make some psychic thing, like 'The Left-Handed Gun.' They don't know anything about Western history.
I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.
I get uncomfortable when people give me presents and watch me open them. I don't have birthday parties, because the idea of a group of people singing and looking at me while I'm blowing out candles gives me hives.
Did I collect baseball cards? I've got 10 books full of plastic in my mother's house. All the Upper Decks, the Fleers, the Fleer Ultras. My grandfather brought me to the trade shows. I collected Marvel cards, too.
There were a lot of years that I was trying to do things that other people wanted me to do. But you have to follow your heart. Believe that you have a unique group of talents and abilities that are going to allow you to accomplish something in an area that interests you. Work at that and try to make some kind of contribution to your community.
The record company doesn't know what to do with me, because I'm not a Lily Allen, but I'm not really an indie artist, either. All the best artists have been in the middle.
Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.
In terms of achievement, the pride is very important to me. It keeps me going every day. The money is always second to me.
We had an argument, and he told me to be home at midnight, and I said no. And so when I did come home, the door was locked. And I had gotten a set of luggage for graduation that day, and it was on the front porch, packed. He thought that he was going to prove a point and I was going to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry'.