I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

Habit is habit, and not to be thrown out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Just try to be the best you can be; never cease trying to be the best you can be. That's in your power.

I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you decide to do and how much effort you put behind it.

I think any teenager, any single parent household teenager growing up in New York City, will probably go through tumultuous years. I definitely did. It all sort of righted itself once I definitively got on the path of being a musician or, like, following that directly.

As it turns out, I can see I'm quite a business-minded person as I've developed.

I remember the first time I saw the 'Sugarhill Gang' on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, 'What's going on? How did those guys get on national TV?' And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.

While you can be trained and groomed to be a better actor, seasoning happens only to TV actors. TV actors shoot every day, and that makes a difference to the project. They are hard-working, but that's not taking anything away from the film actors.

I was a freelancer all through my twenties. I did about one story a month and I wanted to write fiction, so the stories that I would do were precursors to 'Sex and the City.'

That's correct, I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn't write.