I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive.

It doesn't matter if a million people tell you what you can't do, or if ten million tell you no. If you get one yes from God that's all you need.

God gives everyone a lane and no one can beat you in your lane. Just stay focused on Him and what you are supposed to do. And everything will be alright.

Rather than focus on your critics, focus on the people who are impacted by your work.

Don't wait for someone to green light your project, build your own intersection.

Once you're truly happy with yourself alone, that's when you are safe to find the right person to spend the rest of your life with.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

The key to life when it gets tough is to keep moving. Just keep moving.

You know, people at Wal-Mart are standing there with their uniforms on. I feel like I'm putting on a uniform to do a movie. I don't feel like it's dressing in drag.

A mother’s love is stronger than distance, more powerful than time and can transcend the grave.

Fear is a sprit that really can stop you from living.

My life is build around books.

Humanity is a comic role.

(On the communist regime of Ceaușescu)"Romania, " said Eugene, "was twenty million people living inside the imagination of a madman.

My father once told me, and it's stuck with me to this day: As you walk through life, every time you fart it pushes you forward.

It's like walking on a 1970 blaze orange shag carpet in a kitchen.

If the function of the artist is to see, the first duty of the critic is to understand what the artist saw.

For kids growing up now, there's no difference watching 'Avatar' on an iPad or watching YouTube on TV or watching 'Game of Thrones' on their computer. It's all content. It's just story.

Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little. In renunciation lies a delicious taste of simplicity and deep peace.

Meditation is a journey without movement. In the external world you have to move in order to go ahead, in meditation you don't move, yet you attain.

We become what we think about. Energy flows where attention goes.