The one thing you'll notice when you're walking through Harlem is every single passing car is playing different music and there's also music that's being played out of windows.

Harlem is filled with moments of history.

One of the things that's really the cornerstone of '90s hip-hop is sampling.

I mean, we should only be talking about the merits of film ["Moonlight"] because one of the great things about the visual language is that it is the great equalizer.

I was just really happy to see Barry [Jenkins] and Mahershala [Ali] and everyone else involved with "Moonlight" get their moment.

The Academy Awards for people in Hollywood is like the Super Bowl, the presidential inauguration and winning the NBA championship rolled up into one.

The only thing I can worry about is my swimming pool and keeping the leaves out of my swimming pool. I can't worry about what's happened to my neighbors.

That's one thing that you notice in New York that you don't notice in LA is how much music is all over the place.

If you're black living in the community and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.

When you're a black superhero you can't erase the notion that you're black.

Thus, I have found humbleness by the mere thoughts of having love beckon upon me, if so acquired through some thread of reality or that of the imaginative

I know there’s something troubling you. I’m not going to ask what it is, if you don’t want to tell me. But remember that I’m your mother. Nothing you say could ever shock me or make me love you less.

Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)

Exploration is the sport of the scientist

Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested more pressing motives, more powerful incentives to charity, than these, that we shall be judged by it at the last dreadful day.

I've had a few gigs where things have got out of hand and there has been a huge crush with my fans. They are important and I don't want them being hurt. They are a mad crowd.

I was obsessed with Eminem when I was younger. When he first came out I was about 12 and fanatical about his 'Slim Shady' CD. I think he's a genius.

What woman would not appreciate a God who becomes her attorney, assumes her case, requires no fee, and wins her the victory?

I have a great map of the Tibesti Mountains in the southern Sahara or Northern Chad. It's a dream of mine to go there, but it's such a volatile area, you have to be prudent.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.