The role James Baldwin played in my life is incommensurable as stated above. He helped, along with a few others, to shape the man that I am today. My debt to him is invaluable.

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

Just try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined.

The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history.

There are only one or two geniuses every century.

You need to react. That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

[James] Baldwin is needed even more today because he helps you focus to the essential, to what is important.

[James] Baldwin "was one of greatest intellectuals of his time. He was an important voice, period, not an important black voice."

Today, I don't even think that people like [James Baldwin] are possible. He would not have that much room.

Your tweet is as important as if you would have written a Ph.D. [dissertation] on the subject.

As a pop star, you don't have to be that smart for people to think you're intelligent.

Anything you pray for, you need to prepare for.

Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal.

What I have found is that even when you try to transform existing structures they are so powerful they often overwhelm, seduce, and control you.

Jewish people have given me all the breaks you can possibly have. But of course, it's wonderful when you feel that your own nationality has made it. It gives you hopes.

Professional traders have always had some system or other based upon their experience and governed either by their attitude towards speculation or by their desires.

I just feel like when you fall in love you can't help who you fall in love with. You love who you love; it just is what it is.

The real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it's big, rare event happens all the time — including life — and that doesn't mean it's special.

At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.

Herat, 8 December. What a day it was! God save me from any more adventures on a drained stomach.