Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

I ignored your aura but it grabbed me by the hand, like the moon pulled the tide, and the tide pulled the sand.

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.

You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.

Life without knowledge is death in disguise.

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

Comic books aren't nerdy. You'd have to be an idiot to think computers are nerdy.

There is a lot of food culture that goes on in the home and in the community in non-traditional ways. Food is a lot more than restaurants.

I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq.

Somewhere on this planet is your best friend. Find that person.

I don't normally cook, but if I did it probably would be beans, sausage, bacon and eggs. I never really get to eat that to be honest.

It's a strange courage you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part!

The whole drug war is nothing but a pretext to increase police power and personnel, and that, of course, is dead wrong. So many created imagined drug offenses.