“To step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make. What was difficult was the work and the practice that went into becoming good at it, because I hadn’t had any training.”

I like Pirate’s Booty. Prunes and olives, too. I love hummus. I can eat that until I die. I tend to eat mostly organic food.

Business is fun. Controlling your own destiny is fun. Creating an idea and turning it into a movie; finding an artist and guiding their career and bringing them to some type of status – there’s joy in that.

I really don’t know how to be anyone else, and whenever I try to be anyone else, I fail miserably. Or I disappoint myself. It doesn’t build my self-esteem, and it doesn’t help me grow me at all.

When you’re rapping, you do have to perform to a certain degree, but not every rapper is necessarily a gifted actor.

If there are kids who want to follow in my footsteps, I’d say that my shoes are too big for them to fill! But their shoe size is just perfect.

Even if you don’t have anything, even if you’ve got a quarter in your pocket, to share with someone else who has nothing really helps.

I’ve never wanted to be put into a box, not musically.

I’m not living large; I just want to live comfortably. I wanna have financial stability that is unshakable.

I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn’t work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.

Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think.

I didn’t know I had it in me. There’s more to all of us than we realize. Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think. We’re capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.

I’m proud of everything I do, but I think I’m the most happy about becoming a rapper. It was my entrance into everything. That helped me get into acting.

You have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone.

If I ran into a 19-year-old version of myself, I’d just tell her to live, full out. I might also tell her to go ahead and have a few babies and not worry about the timing of it.

I never really took any acting classes. I’m just a natural ham, I guess.

Always follow your own path.

I think playing against [Lionel Messi] is pretty difficult. Playing by the side of the best of the world is always good. Things get easier. And if I have to win, may it be by Messi’s side. It would be great.

For African-Americans, it’s still going to be – some people say double hard – I’d say four times as hard. Be an opportunist. Take advantage of your resources, because the only way to win is with education, self-esteem, having value in yourself.

The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.

The school of life offers some difficult courses, but it is in the difficult class that one learns the most.

I’m full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.

As I always say, I do not wish you an easy time, but I wish you that whatever difficulty you may have, you will overcome it.

The amount of money we receive will always be in direct ratio to the demand for what we do; our ability to do it; and the difficulty in replacing us.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.