I was raised that emotion was a good thing.

Like comedy, horror has an ability to provoke thought and further the conversation on real social issues in a very powerful way.

Sometimes blessings come in strange packages.

I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.

The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.

A greater truth that I think we are faced with on a day-to-day basis as minorities is: We are the color of skin first and people second.

How we act with each other really reveals our most animal instincts.

I can fathom anything, man. I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.

[ When I met Barack Obama] He says, I do a pretty good me myself - he said something like that. But he's - he is a close talker. He's a touchy guy.

I just think racism is within each and every one of us. It's everyone's responsibility to figure out how they deal with this kind of obsolete instinct.

I think that human beings are the most awful monster we have ever seen.

How strange it was to think that he, who such a short time ago dared not believe in the happiness of her loving him, now felt unhappy because she loved him too much!

I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.

No one should notice how your eyes are done or the color of your eyeshadow. They should just notice you and notice that you're beautiful, that you have beautiful eyes.

In the songs that I write, that's where I get to be really brave and outspoken.

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

Everything in our family was always boxing. It was the life my father chose for me.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?

I've been watching so many movies and they all have to do with the DVDs. It's just so much more convenient.

Never opt for change simply to leave something you don't like. Change works best when you go toward something, even if it is the unknown.