I've gotten my butt kicked by the best. Jet Li beat me up the best, but Steven Segal can still kick a good butt. It's a different kind of kicking, though.

If they respect the craft and what we're doing and they bring something to the table and they work hard, I don't care what you do as your side job or as your day job.

You can say what you want to about a rapper in a movie, but look at what Ice Cube has done. Ice Cube has created more opportunities for other actors to get jobs in this business than some actors have.

It's just a matter of me opening up the page and whatever is written on the page, that's what I'm here to do.

Romeo Must Die was the first film that I did where I was able to just be free as an actor.

I ain't got nothing. I've got this watch, and these shoes, and that's about it.

I've worked with some actors who can't act.

I provide a little comic relief.

More oftentimes than not, you're automatically guilty before innocent.

I realized my family was funny, because nobody ever wanted to leave our house.

I'm not a comedian. I'm an actor who just happens to be funny on occasion.

Everyone realized I was the innocent victim of a shakedown.

Some of these guys... I've worked with Ice Cube, I think he's an immensely talented rapper and actor.

If you respect the art and you have some talent about you, I'm on your team.

Glenn Close is a living icon. You look at the work, and I think it's wild, because she thinks some of her best work was in Dangerous Liaisons and that's what I believe as well.

I've gotten my butt kicked by the best. Jet Li beat me up the best, but Steven Segal can still kick a good butt. It's a different kind of kicking, though.

I went to the High School for Performing Arts, and to Howard University on a talent scholarship.

My choices were never wrong.

There isn't a switch that I turn on. I'm an actor. This is what I do.

Be ready for when your time comes, you will have that window of opportunity, so seize the moment and capitalise on it.

Set your heights more than what you see around you, see beyond.

You say you're a comedian, you always have to be on guard.

They gave us the freedom just to play and have fun.

Tom Arnold and I, we have a huge firefight scene on top of a German tank. I get to shoot 50 caliber rounds. We shoot a helicopter out of the sky. That's the only fight I'm in.

It's sort of an action flick. You can't be that funny trying to steal diamonds.

It's a remake of a film called Inferno Affairs. It's a Hong Kong film, and if we come anywhere close to what they did in the original, we're going to have a hot property on our hands, because Inferno Affairs is a great piece.

Comedy is second nature for me.

Independent films are where you really get to cut your teeth and have some fun and do the things that mainstream Hollywood doesn't want to do.

Leo couldn't deliver Mr. Martin Scorsese his Oscar with 'The Aviator', but I will go on record to say I will do so in 'The Departed'.

Things are changing. I've been training since I was 9 years old to stretch my wings as an actor dramatically, but have never really been afforded the opportunity to show that.

My wife and I have always trusted each other, and I have to thank her strength.

You take the quote from Sam Jackson about how he'll never work with a rapper, and I can understand where he's coming from because he says rappers can't act.

I realized my family was funny because nobody ever wanted to leave our house.

There are going to be ups and downs in any relationship. It's a team.

Attitudes toward food have completely changed.

Reading isn't about managing expectations. In certain ways, writing is. You're trying to send signals early in a book about what might be coming later, but I think worrying about the kind of chatter around a book is something I try and stay as far away from when I'm reading.

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

Everyone at some point in their lives feels excluded and misunderstood.

We're stunned by the diversity of rocks. This stuff looks like it was put into a blender.

There are a lot of people who do a lot of things to be outrageous with fashion, hair or makeup.

When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.

Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.

I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there. But I also know there are Elton Simpsons out there I cannot see.

I have a lot of brothers. It's easy for me to do physical stuff. I had to survive. I really love it, and I'd love to do more of it. I want to do action films. I want to go and hang off of wires, and jump off of bridges, and hang on bungee cords. I've always really loved it.

Great men are true men the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

We are losing the democracy that we're trying to sell in the Mideast and everywhere else right here in our own nation.

So many designers only sketch and leave pattern-making to others. Pattern-making is important so you know the structure. Then if someone tells me, 'I can't make a pattern from that sketch,' I can tell them, 'I will make it' and then they are quiet. If I can't make it, I don't design it.

Once you consent to some concession, you can never cancel it and put things back the way they are.