I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

Nothing will work unless you do.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Tragedy is when someone ends up dead.Everything else is just a bump in the road.

Art gropes it stalks like a hunter lost in the woods listening to itself and to everything around it unsure of itself waiting to pounce.

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.

It's beautiful when you watch something good happen to somebody when it's well deserved.

No matter how successful I got, my mother still thinks I'm a bad person, basically.

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?

Religious fundamentalism, even before it eliminates human beings by perpetrating horrendous killings, eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext.

See all these buildings, Russell? All these buildings were once a drawing on a piece of paper, and before that they were an idea in someone’s head. Any idea that you have, you can make manifest.

I talked with Quentin about where the character came from, and he told me Kansas City. I don't know how somebody talks from Kansas City, so I made him from New York.

Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.