“Crime is just unvarnished capitalism, after all.”

Fatherhood is the best thing I ever did. It changes your perspective. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is really the most extraordinary thing I have taken on.

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn’t know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you.

I’m probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don’t think anyone really knows. You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.

If someone wants to do drugs … as long as he or she isn’t corrupting minors or driving under the influence or endangering others, shouldn’t a person have that right?

I look and there’s our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they’re brothers and sisters, man. They’re brothers and sisters and it’s a sight for elation.

In Missouri, where I come from, we don’t talk about what we do – we just do it. If we talk about it, it’s seen as bragging.

I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don’t discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that’s very telling.

Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.

I don’t feel restless, I just like to travel.

A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss. That’s the trade-off. But I’ll take it all.

America is not a country, it’s a business.

I don’t want to waste time being angry at someone I love.

You make yourself what you are. You have control of your own destiny.

The woman is the reflection of her man. If you love her to the point of madness, she will become it.

I’m not a big proponent of happiness. I think it’s highly overrated. I think misery is underrated. There’s so much value in that. You can’t have one without the other.

Too much mercy often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

Criminals are never very amusing. It’s because they’re failures. Those who make real money aren’t counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals.

We must link Azamgarh to art and culture and not with terrorism and crime.

A great cause of evil in the world is that men seldom think themselves criminal if they offer the same injustice to others that has been successfully practiced on themselves.

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else.

When you look at where the real problems are among minorities in our society, particularly blacks, it’s at the bottom. It’s the people who are in school systems that don’t educate, neighborhoods where there is a lot of crime, drugs, the whole bit.