There is nothing I can do to undo what I did. I can only say again how sorry I am to those I let down and then strive to go forward with a greater sense of humility and purpose, and with gratitude to those who stood with me during a very difficult chapter in my life.
I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
It’s only by coincidence I started working with my father – all because of King Abdullah’s decision not to grant my promotion. God bless his soul, he did me a favor.
Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.
I went to a Catholic school but did not really fit in.
Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.
I’m just happy that Jesus Christ, um, did not let me lose my teeth when I was 20 years old. ‘Cause I was wondering, like, what if you kept your baby teeth until the age of 18 or 20, and then you lose ’em? That would look pretty bad.
Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.
I did it all, singing, the harp, piano. But I was so shy, I’d wake up at six to practice piano because I didn’t want anyone to hear me play. But then I’d do a big show in school where everyone would see me, and that was actually alright.
Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
The Soviet Union had only one party. You couldn’t express yourself freely; you couldn’t admit belief in God. And yet this terrible regime understood that human beings have to express themselves, through music, even at a bad level. All kids studied music automatically, just as they did maths or languages or sport.
Coy Wire played in the NFL for 9 years and is now a motivational speaker and has a book out called ‘Change Your Mind.’ He is an amazing person with such positive energy! When Kroy and I first met and started dating, there weren’t a whole lot of people that supported us, but Coy always did.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.
Not only did America invent the skyscraper, it invented the skyline.
What I treasure the most is people coming up to me in the elevator and saying, ‘You really did a great job’: neighbours who congratulate for a job well done or little fans who hug me and say they want to be like me.
I did nothing to look the way I look. The genetic cards that anyone is dealt are not in their control, so to take pride in my looks would be a mistake. And besides, in L.A. there’s always someone more beautiful!
For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I’m not sure where I’m going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn’t do it.
I gotta be honest with you. I’m kind of jealous of the way my dad gets to talk to my mom sometimes. Where are all those old-school women you can just take your day out on? When did they stop making those angels?
I’m a socialist. I know Marx and communism did not work before, but I think in the future you have the possibility of having total communism and equal access to everything for everybody.
I don’t get jealousy, I don’t get how people hate each other – I never did.
When someone saves your life and gives you life, there’s gratitude, humility; there’s a time you’ve been so blessed you realize you’ve been given another chance at life that maybe you did or didn’t deserve.
I’m proud of what I did in ‘Daybreak.’
Kanye West is a brilliant poet and artist. He and I work in a very similar way. We feel the vibration, the power of something, and it inspires us to create, whether it is music or design. It is the same process. Working with Kanye is a joy and great privilege. In 2012, we did collaboration together.
You have no choice as a professional chef: you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes part of yourself. I certainly don’t cook the same way I did 40 years ago, but the technique remains. And that’s what the student needs to learn: the technique.
I was a naughty kid. Teachers did not like me much.
No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world.
My first CD that I had was the Ying Yang Twinz, and my grandma bought it for me. Honestly, I think my grandma got it from a thrift store or something. She just got it for me. It was in downtown Philadelphia. And I would listen to it. I liked it. None of my friends did, though, but I liked it.
After my parents’ divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn’t super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
I’ve never had any religion. I’d prefer it if I did, really. Even as a boy I just couldn’t make myself believe.
I found what I was looking for at Langley. This was what a research mathematician did. I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don’t want to go to work.
People just like a good crime story; they want to know who did it.
The groups I liked, you really looked forward to their albums and you rushed to get them the first day, because you knew it was going to be different than what they did before. The records told you what that group was into at that time.
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.
My trainer don’t tell me nothing between rounds. I don’t allow him to. I fight the fight. All I want to know is did I win the round. It’s too late for advice.
Do you know what I love about hunting? That I am no one in the woods, no one at all. I thought the animals might recognize me, but they didn’t. They did not even ask me for any autographs.
I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.
If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.
I think the best thing I ever did was, years before I got the ‘Late Night’ show, when I first got out to Los Angeles to be a television writer, the first thing I did was I signed up to take improvisational classes… And I studied that for years, and I really loved it.
Seems like God don’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams – but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.
I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‘Why did you do that?’ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.
When I was at ‘Newsweek’ magazine – which, you know, this really sounds like I walked four miles in the snow to school – but I started at ‘Newsweek’ magazine in 1963, which was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it was actually legal to discriminate against women, and ‘Newsweek’ did.
I’m scared by the enormous amount of bottled water being consumed today, instead of people drinking filtered tap water. Did you know that nearly 90 percent of those plastic bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose?
Money? How did I lose it? I never did lose it. I just never knew where it went.
I do sometimes go back to my old songs. Some I feel very proud of. They make me wonder, ‘How did I do this?’
My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time. They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don’t have to be anything else.
Walking is magic. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps… this is a primal way to connect with one’s deeper self.
