The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever – was write novels.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits. But they’re learned to do more with less, and so they don’t hire.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

If I could, I would not do anything else. I’d just be in the studio for my whole life. I would never go to parties, events, and red carpets. I would rather just be in the studio for the whole time. I don’t even care. Nobody has to know what I look like. I just want to make music.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law, and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would take.

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

I can dance to just about anything.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

My father had a dairy farm. He employed three black families and one white family, and I used to play with black children.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‚tap-dancing to work.‘

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

I feel that there are a few things in the world without cultural barriers.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.