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

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.

Emily Dickinson seems rather tame because she pretty much uses the same meter every time. It's called 'common meter.' It's a line of four beats that's followed by a line of three beats.

When I think of Kansas, I think of family.

Sometimes in news photography and so on, the pictures are a little bit dry, and put on the page and just set in a journalistic way in front of you.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.

I thank everything, because everything teaches me something.

To be honest with my music... for me to expect anyone to connect it has to come from a place of honesty.

You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

Everybody wants to identify things about a poet or about a playwright. They want to codify something or put it in terms that can be understood. We want to understand something, because that's how our minds work. We like to understand things, and it's discomfiting if we don't understand things.

Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.

If adventure does not wait on the doorstep, climb out through the window

Generally, we admire the thing we are not.

There's something just magical about flight. Period.

I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk.

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.