A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need advice.

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.

Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.

It isn't a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that's beautiful.

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

I think guns are just a symbolic substitute for male genitalia, and I’m okay in that respect.” “Fine. If they get in the house, you can whack them with your genitals.

Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)

the kiss and the bite are such close cousins that in the heat of love they are too readily confounded

The most precious things in life are not those you get for money.

With God in the Joy of Beauty and Youth

Volleyball rules are simple. If it is on the floor, pick it up and get it into the air. If it is in the air, keep it off the floor. —

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

I definitely still have ... angst but I also wrote some songs that say it's okay to love, now. I'm happy in my life, and it's a bit easier to write happy songs when you are actually happy.

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

Every great advancement was once nothing more than a dream in the mind of a visionary.