I was kind of a weird homie; I was a weird kid. Nobody in my family loved books. I'm the only one.

When you win, we win; but when you go down, you go down alone.

Nobody supported me; my family thought I had gone crazy. They thought, you crazy gangster, you crazy drug addict, now you want to be a writer? That's it! They totally gave up on me after that.

Nobody had books at home. My dad was a very educated person, so he would have books at home. All Spanish books. That helped. Most of my homies had no books at home.

The more you know, the more you owe.

I'm not really anti-gang - I was a gang member and so was my son. I'm pro-youth, pro-community, pro-family, pro-arts, and pro-peace.

There are choices you have to make not just once

Eventually I went back to high school. I went to a coaching center in my neighborhood. I had to leave the homeless situation because it was so bad and I knew that I was falling deeper and deeper.

I've always been prepared to write about the hard things. Only for healing, teaching, and enlightening purposes not to hurt or disparage anyone.

In order to stay out of trouble I worked in industry. You can't even do that nowadays; there were all those factories.

Smartass Disciple: Which one was first created, time or things?Master of Stupidity: No things, no changes. No changes, no time.

One of mankind’s greatest sins is inaction in the face of injustice.

It wasn't a kiss that changed the frog, but the fact that a young girl looked beneath warts and slime and believed she saw a prince. So he became one.

A good shepherd has a positive influence on his people through "inward work", i.e. working on them from the inside.

People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I'm this cool, brooding artist. But I'm just having fun with it.

Eighty is when you order a steak and the headwaiter puts it through the blender. Or when you wake up as many times during the night as Burt Reynolds, but not for the same reason.

The evolution of the capitalist style of life could be easily - and perhaps most tellingly - described in terms of the genesis of the modern Lounge Suit.

Do you think it's possible to change something in humanity, not risking? If someone tries to change something and is not risking, it probably means he's not changing anything.

I need to have systems in place to track and monitor my leads

When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, "People need to see what I can do." And it's so laughable, especially with actors.