You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.

When you mention to people growing up in Cleveland they bring up the river catching on fire, or LeBron James leaving, they have these references, but no one imagines ending up there.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

If you told people you were moving to Ohio, they wouldn't congratulate you. They'd say "OH WHY would you move there?" as if that was something that happened to you and you had to deal with.

They never discussed it, but both came to understand it as a promise: he would always make sure there was a place for her. She would always be able to say, Someone is coming. I am not alone.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

I am in a mixed race marriage myself, and I have a mixed race son....The racial perception interest is probably always going to be there to some extent.

After a while, the fear became a habit, too.

Being asked, "Where are you REALLY from?" It makes one feel OTHERED.

There is something about Midwest in general, that has kind of an underdog quality.

I can think of a lot better things to do with my hands than to cut them up on the rim of a drum.

I've got to stop being such a snob about leather-bound books, he reminded himself. E-books do have their moments.

I don't come from a famous family and don't have this detachment from everyday people and everyday life. I'm just doing my job and the attention that comes with it is part of the territory.

A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality.

Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food.

My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.

I can gab with pretty much anyone.

The producers had seen "In a World..." and that's where they found me out and consequently sought me out for this role [in Man up].

Leadership starts at the top.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.