“My mother’s a pretty warm, open person.”

My intention is to do more films.

I had to say something. Kelly’s nomination would go against who President Obama is.

I assume Obama knows about stop and frisk, so this is not the person that should be the head of homeland security.

I was going to go to med school. My father’s dream was that all of his kids become doctors.

You look up to your parents and you want them to accept you,

Life is too short to do something you don’t want to do.

I’m in awe of how grounded Ms. Tyson is and how her performances can be different but the same.

She’s pretty amazing.

She can switch up the delivery, but it’s still with the right intention.

That’s what you want art to do, to open people up and start conversations.

That’s how clueless I was. I just thought I could show up.

I want to tell authentic, real stories with real characters.

I think L.A. is beautiful.

I grew up in New York and I’ve always lived here, so I look at myself as a regular person.

I have a Twitter handle, but I never sign on.

And I’m not sure if he [made his comments on Trayvon] because he was asked a question and he was trying to be diplomatic and neutral – that can’t happen.

Probably I’m more of a fan of the literary references than the pop-culture references. But I do go to the pop-culture well quite frequently because people, I think, are sort of inherently ready to laugh at that. It’s a free laugh almost. Usually, everybody gets it.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

Such words as ‘God’ and ‘Death’ and ‘Suffering’ and ‘Eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

A great nose may be an index Of a great soul.

Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.

After each creative act one has to be sustained by one’s strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don’t know what, lest one tumble.

Or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world.

Though God alone never tastes woe, Yet that man is happy, and poets sing of him, Who conquers with hand or swift foot And wins the greatest of prizes By steadfastness and strength.