When you're a little kid, you have nerve. I'd walk right up to whoever was recording and say, 'Hey, dude, what's the lick of the week?'
I met Nelson Mandela, and I really didn't know what to say. It was years ago at a benefit. I was just in awe of this man because of what he'd done.
In the community, in the African-American community, one person ought to say something, and that is the minister. The minister is paid by the people. He doesn't work for a big company. He doesn't represent a particular special interest.
I always loved asking everybody when I arrived in England, from the drivers who picked me up to the people at the hotel to people I met when I was walking in the park, almost everyone at some point would say, 'Everyone loves Ant & Dec!' From eight to 80.
So if I'm 36, and I have my 19-year-old self, I'm pulling him to the side and saying, 'Listen bruh, throwing on your Timbs and your fitted hat and strolling campus trying to get a girl to say yes, or going to the club hoping you bring a girl home, that's not the way to go about healthy relationships. You need to step back.'
I can't tell you how many people say they were turned off from science because of a science teacher that completely sucked out all the inspiration and enthusiasm they had for the course.
With rap, you go in the studio, you make music, you put the music out, then all of a sudden, you're a star: you have a big record on the radio, and you're on stage, and you've never done it before. Let's say your first show is 'Summer Jam,' and you're in front of 60,000 people, and you've never played an arena, ever. You're gonna suck.
Having created a business that is a success, when you are in a nepotistic situation, people who don't do anything themselves, well, it is easy for them to say it's never good enough.
Say, the next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you, will you?
I've never wanted my kid faced with the idea of, 'Who's the fat guy sitting in the living room? What the hell is he doing?' I figure I might as well go to work so he can say his dad works.
I think the idea is to try and understand everything about the characters and where the character is coming from, from their point of view, why they say what they do. And not, 'Oh, but I would never say that. Why does the character say that?' But then making it as personal as possible.
I've never been comfortable being a pawn. I work with brands where I feel like I can have my say and companies that I'm proud to be in a relationship with. Partnerships take a lot of time. If I am going to put my name and my face and my energy behind something, I want it to be authentic.
Every day, I wake up and say, 'Good Morning, Jesus.'
Historically, the women who have been the great painters of the canon have very often have been the wives or daughters of supportive men. Like Artemisia, whose father was a very established painter. I will say that the two current contemporary artists I admire the most are women: Kara Walker and Swoon.
Sputnik quickly became one of the three great shocks to hit America - historians say the equal of Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
I used to visit kids with cancer all the time. Now I'm in the club. I understand what's happening to these little kids with brain cancer, and I ask myself, 'How do they make it through the day?' So you see a little 5-year-old and you say, 'If she can do it, I can suck it up.'
Like lots of people who say, 'I'm going to write a novel,' it's actually more comfortable to think I could write a novel than to discover that you can't.
If you think about how many headlining female comics are out there, you could say 15, maybe 20?
I'd love to get into some comedy, but people keep saying, 'You're not funny!' And I say, 'Well, fair enough.' I have done comedy on stage.
Wood pellet grilling could potentially have a lower risk of cancer when compared to other forms of grilling, as some people say that it leads to the creation of fewer carcinogens.
There's discussion in athletics about how sport - where they say 'SportsCenter' has ruined the fundamentals of basketball because it's - it only applauds dunks and three point shots and blocks, and I think, you know, the cable news has done the same thing for politics.
As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you.
When are we going to stop labeling everyone? How many times have I been referred to as 'out gay actor?' Do we say, 'out heterosexual actor' when we refer to Tom Hanks?
I'm just very fortunate that I'm alive. I look every day and see my hand and say, 'Thank you, Lord.'
I don't want to say I'm never going to direct again, but directing's hard work.
It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'
I'd say if you wanted to forestall bad events, the best thing to do is anticipate them and try to correct them before they get close.
When you first meet an investor, you've got to be able to say in one compelling sentence - that you should practice like crazy - what your product does, so that the investor that you are talking to can immediately picture the product in their own mind.
If photographers are responsible for creating or reflecting an image of women in society, then, I must say, there is only one way for the future, and this is to define women as strong and independent. This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection.
People say, 'Oh, to be the daughter of Picasso!' But it's not as extravagant as it seems. He was very special, very vibrant, but he was my father. I didn't have another.
I will say that I do gravitate more towards quirkier guys. I always date guys who wear glasses.
Soaps are great. You learn to work very fast - some say superficially, but that's not really true. You do some very serious character work. I've never had any feelings about a stigma attached to it, and nowadays there seems to be less snobbery about what you do. More and more big names are doing TV and commercials and voiceovers.
To make films, you have to have something to say. To have something to say, you have to be a student of life. And to be a student of life, you have to be feeding yourself with what life, politics, society, and your family fuels you with.
Let me just say that to imagine racism does not exist is imagination. And to imagine that it does not create its own set of problems is true imagination. So let's not imagine that racism is gone, extinguished, because it's not. We are seeing this in the top levels of the political arena, and we are seeing it very, very plainly.
When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.
I enjoy repartee and frequently engage in devil's advocacy. In short, when I talk to friends, I do not guard every word that I say because I think that I know they know that my commitment to equality and justice is real, and they would not twist my words or misinterpret what I am saying to them.
