Your parents are always a big influence on you. They help you make you who you are. The main thing my parents taught me is just to be a nice person - to be generous, kind and happy. I hope it comes off when I work and meet people.
Often we're recreating what we think we're supposed to be as human beings. What we've been told we're supposed to be, instead of who we authentically are. The key about the creation of full self-expression is to be authentically who you are, to project that.
Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that's their problem. But if you do have a passion, an honest passion, just do it.
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
There isn't that disconnect between the fashion industry and people now - you can be a trendsetter even if you don't go to shows. The industry isn't as snobbish as it used to be.
You have to go by your instincts in casting.
If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'
Mr. Chairman, delegates. I accept your nomination for President of the United States of America. I do so with humility, deeply moved by the trust you have placed in me. It is a great honor. It is an even greater responsibility.
Twitter, to me, works if you're funny. Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.
If I like it, it's gonna be on my album. You can't please everyone.
I don't go to a psychiatrist. I don't go to a gym. I run away from my accountant, I run away from my dentist. They are all supposed to help you, but I like to stay in bed, where I have a chance to reflect, like Rossellini.
If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail.
Obviously I know if you're putting yourself out there, saying, 'Hey! Listen to my music!,' with pictures of yourself in the magazines, then people are going to judge you. 'I hate her music. I hate her hair. I hate her production. I hate her videos.' Fine: don't care. That's the great thing about art: it's not for everyone.
I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.
It's like when you want to make a house... the technique is very important.
If you're not Prince, you're never going to sound like Prince.
When you've got the Daytona 500 out there at stake and everything riding on the line, guys go for it, and the guys that go for it are the ones that are either going to win or they're going to wreck.
A nightmare would be when somebody is trying to be funnier than everyone else. And you've got a group scene or two-person scene, and one person decides, 'I'm the funny in this,' and bulldozes everyone else, and they make sure they're the reason everyone loves the scene.
I've realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don't trust my instincts - Thats when I get in trouble.
I don't know, you know, when I look at it now, I don't know what in the world made me think I could become a director. I really don't.
That's the way blacks have been encouraged to think: that we got to stick together. You've got a situation today where if a black person says he thinks O.J. Simpson's guilty, other blacks will cut their eyes at him and say, 'You ought to go somewhere and sit down and shut up.'
When I hear that I realize how quickly time passes and how everybody goes on their journeys and they're always unbelievable and they never go where you think they're going to take you and, quite frankly, it also makes me feel a little old.
I'm at least getting my foot in the door as far as doing straight dramatic parts, which no one would have ever considered me for in the '80s. I never objected to that because I love doing comedy, and I'm not the kind of actor that insists that unless you're doing a serious dramatic role, you're not acting.
I had ridiculous amounts of energy. Mom's like, you're driving me crazy - do you want to try gymnastics? From the moment I started it, I loved it and it kind of was like storybook from there.
There's been many times when a producer will say, 'I don't think you want to say that.' We were told we shouldn't be so brutally honest about songwriting or radio or the industry.
Many, whose hearts are conquered by acute spite, roll out balanced tales from their own heart, which do not balance when you weigh words against deeds.
It's an incredible privilege for an actor to look into the camera. It's like looking right into the heart of the film, and you can't take that lightly.
Many of the people I know and that you know are very complex human beings, and it's not all about race. Everything isn't a question of race. Everything isn't a question of economics at the very base level.
People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do.
Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.
Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.
Multifaceted and textured characters are always more intriguing to me. You never really just want to play one note. It becomes a bit monotone and boring.
Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.
The notion of religious liberty is that you cannot be forced to participate in a religious ceremony that's not of your choosing simply because you're out-voted.
People talk about perfect timing, but I think everything is perfect in its moment; you just want to capture that.
This is the culture you're raising your kids in. Don't be surprised if it blows up in your face.
