“You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.”

All I ever wanted out of my life was to buy my mother a house. By 1995, I have achieved all I wanted materially in life.

My momma didn’t clean up floors so I could be a thug… so I could wear my pants down.

I said I would never wear my gold again because it would be insensitive and disrespectful to all the people who died and lost everything in Katrina.

If you gonna wear the mohawk, you stick with it. You don’t just be dibby-dabbing. You make up your mind.

You’ll never have any trouble with Mr. T, I’m just a big, calm teddy bear kind of guy. Mr. T ain’t ashamed to cry.

I try to work out my mind more these days. I try to eat right. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I take the skin off chicken. But I’m not on no special diet. I like my steak and potatoes, ice cream, doughnuts.

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

To be a bodyguard is to be a kamikaze pilot. Dedicated.

I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God.

I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

I always was a Christian… whatsoever a man thinks in his heart is who he is.

I take a lot of pride in the work I do, because people pay to see me. They’ve got to get babysitters, park their car, get popcorn and candy. I’ve got to be conscious of that.

I’m a bold Christian, not a scaredy-cat Christian.

Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

When you give, it comes back to you.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

You can’t learn anything from being perfect.

The worst part of governing, the political side, is the grossest part, so that’s what they call it. So anything that reeks of that immediately gets tuned out by 70 percent of the population.

Today, … anything you can come up with that works is worth trying.

When I write, that takes over and I can’t do anything else.

I don’t think there’s anything that I would call essentially Brazilian in João Gilberto Noll work. In that regard, it translates very well to a cosmopolitan audience.

We need to block out the outside world; we need to disbelieve anything that would doubt us, because everyone will doubt us if we allow them that space.

Of course, what’s not universal is talent. Are you making anything that anyone really should see?

But what you realise after you’ve been in the business for a while is that people develop opinions about you that don’t have anything to do with your music, they like or dislike you for a million reasons, they like or dislike you for your last record.