When you are the lead in a romantic comedy, you have to worry about people really liking you.

I like to eat sweets. When I go to a restaurant, I'll read the dessert menu before I even look at the entrees.

One thing I love about making an ensemble film is that you can have ten people come away from it with ten different messages.

Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.

It's not always about the money.

I'm kind of a private person, and sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get me to talk.

I am just another fireman because the story focuses on Joaquin Phoenix's character, but I play Joaquin's close friend and I get burned up a little bit, but I don't die.

I'm just happy to be working consistently.

I've been in a situation where I was after the money.

Sometimes the stereotypes that a lot of people have are of black men in jail or who don't take care of their kids, so I think it's always important to have that.

Producing is easier, I can just be at the set overseeing the story.

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.

Obviously, as secretary of state, I had some of the most important secrets that we possess, such as going after bin Laden. So I am very committed to taking classified information seriously.

If there had been no fear of failure, neither would there be any joy in success.

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

I had spent my entire career not wanting to talk about weight, not wanting to deal with it, wanting to be an actor first.

I sit in my new room and write everything down. My heart never stops talking.

That which is not worth doing at all is not worth doing well.