I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I want to make something commercial that people can pick up on.

It's just that back then we didn't know that was considered being a coproducer. I would sit on the side and say what I wanted musically, but at the time we thought if you aren't the one playing it, you don't get the credit. Now you'll start seeing my name listed as producer.

I'm not a person that's walkin' down the street looking mean all day.

Hip-hop is definitely not what it used to be, which was creative, original music.

I love my mother. She's my first love. She has been through a lot and is a sole survivor.

I've always had a lot of creative impact on the music with Timbaland.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.

When you turn on your radio, you don't always want to hear about someone shootin' some person. Even if that's the lifestyle they live, people don't always want to hear it.

I wasn't born a superstar.

What my home life is like now is great.

I mean, when it's time to rhyme rhyme, I can get down for mine.

When it comes to size, most people don't want to see themselves looking bigger than what they are.

I want people to feel the heat while they walk down the street and they're just kickin' it.

Now everybody's sampling.

Music should be your escape.

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.

No, because I don't want to hear what's hot and feel I have to copy it. I'll just make up my own thing.

I got a mother who's very strong after taking the whippings that she took from my father.

And basically I always said when I was little that if I ever became successful or a celebrity, I would buy her this huge house and she would never have to work anymore. And I've done that. So I feel happy about doing that.

Everybody is doing the same old thing.

I want to be cutting-edge.

You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.

I have lost friends some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street

We massively exaggerate the exotic risks we can least control and massively undervalue the mundane risks we can control.

I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.

I guess confidence is the only thing that I take from project to project, but I'm always open to learning everybody's style - the director, the actor I'm working with.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

I was born to play Hercules. I have loved and honored the mythology over the years - since I was a kid. When I first broke into Hollywood, 'Hercules' was one of the movies that I - not chased, because I didn't have the power to chase anything - but always had in the back of my mind.

Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.

You can't keep a democracy going in a functional and constructive way if only 10 percent of the people you represent think your institution is functioning in an acceptable way. That's just not viable.

The name, Seventh-day Adventist, is a standing rebuke to the Protestant world. Here is the line of distinction between the worshipers of God, and those who worship the beast, and receive his mark. The great conflict is between the commandments of God and the requirements of the beast.

True Grit is making a decision and standing by it doing what must be done. No moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows he should have done.

I don't feel there are enough women artists out there who are saying anything of tremendous relevance.

It is the cells which create and maintain in us, during the span of our lives, our will to live and survive, to search and experiment, and to struggle.

Yeah, it's nice to get paid for therapy rather than having to pay $240 an hour for it.

I don't do a comic book thinking there is a movie. I just want it to be as good a comic book as it can be.

If I don't learn something new every year, I go crazy.

A lot of people who watch figure skaters want us to look like pretty princesses. I want people to see the athlete, and I want to look like a woman among girls.

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Modern fake fur looks so much like real fur that the moment it leaves the atelier, no one can tell it's not the real thing. And I've struggled with that.

I did a lot of ridiculous television. Between 1980 and '85 I had no confidence, so I did everything I was told to do.

Where I come from, all of us wanted to be footballers. We played all the time; that's all we did at school or wherever until it went dark and you couldn't see the ball.

Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable.

I, of course, meditate for two hours every morning. It's part of my schedule; I wake up at 4 a.m. every day and I love it.

The hearing test, which involved sitting in a quiet room listening to noises of various pitch played through headphones, confirmed the worst. I had no hearing in my left ear whatsoever.