If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.

Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it's because music is fun. Plan and simple. It opens up their minds to dream great dreams about where they can go and what they can do when they get older.

There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs... begins.

A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop.

If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.

Know the business, learn the business, own something.

All the time I was writing hit songs with my partner David Porter, I always had the yen to perform. Sure did. And when the opportunity came, I took it. The first album, 'Presenting Isaac Hayes,' didn't do so hot, but it was like a prelude for what was to come.

Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business.

Guys in slavery sang praises to the Lord to deliver them from bondage.

I first heard African drum rhythms and chants at the movies. Then, when I had the opportunity to go to Africa and visit the villages, I heard the real, raw, true rhythms and realised the origins of the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South.

I influence people, hopefully on the positive side.

I think the kids today need to hear more about morals and values.

I used to stand in front of the mic and cry.

I was a pop freak. I love music. Of course, I knew soul because I grew up in it. Writing it and everything. I love soul. But I love a tune that has some meat in it. Something I could hang my hat on. Because music is universal. Therefore, I felt no boundaries.

I'd always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time... wow.

I've been around a long time, and when I was at the top of the hill, I was very ahead of my time! Evidence of that is that my music is still current today - you know, rappers sample it all the time. So, rather than compromise my artistic integrity, I concentrated on movies.

Just, you know, you can't put bread in a cold oven. You know, you've got to take your time. You've got to heat it up. So that's what, that's what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo.

Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honoured.

Self-expression is always a right, but it's still not there to be abused.

The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence. And they'll tell you if you ask.

There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.

There's always hurdles. So I just keep moving, just constantly redefining myself. That's how you stay in the race.

There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!

You never know how deep love grows till you lose it. And you never never never realize its true for you until its gone.

Self expression is always a right but its still not there to be abused.

Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.

I think it's the fact that I do something different and that I actually have some success with it. That bothers a lot of people... especially comics.

I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.

The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the U.N.

Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

TV has grown so much. It is like a powerhouse medium.

I showed up in October 1946, part of an early surge that would become a great nationwide baby boom. My sister Kathy was born a year later.

I scored in a World Cup and I want that buzz again.

Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.

I wish that people could understand that people need to laugh. They need to sing. They need to create their own joie de vivre.

So I promise you that this State of the State, like a good pizza, will be delivered in 25 minutes or less.

Who doesn't love the parables? You know there's a solution, but you have to do some work to find it.

Done laid around, done stayed around. This old town too long and it seems like I've got to travel on

Everything is possible. Anything is possible at any time and at any time in life. That's such an affirmative kind of feeling.

Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.

English has more flexibility. Its a very plastic very shapeable very expressive language. In that sense it feels quite natural.

When I was 3 my parents put me in gymnastics because I was a bundle of energy and they just didn't know what to do with me! They put me in a Tots class and I just fell in love with it.

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior another is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.

Nothing I did contributed to me having cancer, so I can't sit back and say, 'Oh why me.' Why not me? Why does tragedy always have to hit someone else?

As actors we give so much of ourselves away so I like to keep my personal life to myself.

Love everyone. Life is just too short for anything else.

I still do commercial work as an actor, which I love, because it's very quick, and it definitely pays my bills.

I always thought I'd make a good parent, but I was single and led a solitary life for many, many years. Then I met David, and he had experience with kids and wanted to have a family, too.

Everything you have ever heard about the strangeness of Hollywood is true!