“We are carrying collectively a lot of trauma, especially those of us in the African-American community. And if we’re not careful, it’ll overtake us, and we’ll self-destruct.”

Some people feel like I’m arrogant. It’s unfortunate, because people don’t know my heart.

Refuse to be disheartened, discouraged, distracted from your goals in life.

Continue to speak out against all forms of injustice to yourselves and others, and you will set a mighty example for your children and for future generations.

We must rediscover our faith in the future and join with one another to ensure that nonviolence is the prevalent choice for government, law enforcement, the non-profit sector, business, education, media, entertainment, arts, and for the global citizenry.

In 1985, I was arrested, along with my mother and brother, Martin III, in a protest against apartheid at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

As I reflect on the legacy of my father, the greatest aspect is his legacy of peace.

It is painful beyond measure to lose a loving father and grandmother to violence.

When my father died, the money he left us would have dried up within a year were it not for my mother. We might very well have ended up on welfare.

People have labeled me homophobic. If I was homophobic, I wouldn’t have friends who are gay and lesbian, so that can’t be true.

Before my mother was a King, she was a gifted vocalist and musician, whose skill and academia garnered her a scholarship to the prestigious New England Conservatory for Music in Boston.

In 1985, I joined my mother in a protest against apartheid in which we were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. And she was at President-elect Mandela’s side in Johannesburg when he claimed victory in South Africa’s first free elections.

If people want to criticize me, that’s their issue.

Daddy taught us through his philosophy of nonviolence, which placed love at the centerpiece, that through that love we can turn enemies into friends. Through that love, we can create more dignified atmospheres.

Institutionalized racism has been with us pre-Obama, and it obviously will be with us post-Obama.

I know that the absence of my father in my life had its cost.

I wrestled with anger from the age of sixteen. It’s still one of my nemeses. I have to remember that the word of God says, ‘Be slow to anger.’

You have to go the rounds from individual to individual in order to gather the totality of the race.

Movies are the work of a collective conscious. It takes 500-800 people on a movie to complete a vision.

What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment.

Movies are a collective art. Art by proxy.

We don’t, as a collective life on this planet, all get groovy together or all sink into ignorance together. One by one we liberate our souls, our individual souls, from the cycle by our own realizations.

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

If I have a collection of songs for an EP or mixtape, I create the narrative afterwards; but usually with an album, I have a concept and the name first.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.