If you want to know how fortunate you are, visit three places: the slum, the hospital, and the cemetery.

A genuine smile is one of the world’s rarest treasures.

A fish that is afraid of drowning in a river is ignorant of its gifts.

A diamond earns its sparkle from the pressure it endures.

It is in the storm, not the calm, that a rainbow is born.

A determined seed cannot be hidden from the world, not even by dirt.

Calm skies don't make skillful eagles.

If you cry in the rain, only the sky will see your tears.

Birds keep singing beautiful songs, even if they have no audience.

Today's storms help you appreciate tomorrow’s sunshine.

Train the ears to hear more, the eyes to see more, the hands to do more, the feet to accomplish more, the mind to think more, the heart to feel more, and the soul to love more.

but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.

I've never gotten to do romantic comedy like most of the girls. Maybe because I'm fit, people assume that I'm not funny?

It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.

You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.

I am the only 'celebrity' to be public about my lung cancer.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

I believe Fernand Point is one of the last true gourmands of the 20th century. His ruminations are extraordinary and thought-provoking. He has been an inspiration for legions of chefs.

I technically live in the desert - Los Angeles being an artificial oasis - but my interest stems even farther to my own ethnic roots and to my love of antiquity, of the Old World and of the east.

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.