I've been fortunate to be in films that are classic, that are going to be around.

I look at myself as an audience member. I still love movies, and I still go and sit in the back of the big dark room with everybody else, and I want the same thrill.

Long Kiss Goodnight has a huge cult following. They could make another version of that movie right now and make a lot of money.

If you have an opportunity to use your voice you should use it.

I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say 'Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict.'

I actually think I have an audience member's sensibility about going to the movies.

I've been fortunate to be in films that are classic, that are going to be around.

I never had one beer. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I kept drinking till all six beers were gone. You have to have that kind of understanding about yourself. I haven't had a drink now in 12 years.

Not everybody goes to movies to get their life changed.

All movies aren't fun; some are hard work. You try to do something and convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life kind of stuff.

Because of where I come from, I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

I did 'Formula 51' because I got to run around Liverpool in a kilt, with golf clubs.

I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Pam Grier. For the first time, I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'

I just always knew that I lived in two worlds. There was the world of my house and community, but to make my way in that white world I had to modify the way I spoke and acted. I had to sometimes not make direct eye contact.

I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.

I love comic books and I love anime.

I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.

I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics, pure and simple.

I'm a good son, a good father, a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college, I have my education, I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen, I go, 'You know, that's part of history.'

I'm not as angry as I used to be. But I can get in touch with that anger pretty quickly if I feel my space is being invaded or somebody is not treating me with the respect that I think I want.

I've never been to jail. I've never been arrested. I've never been locked up.

It wasn't until I let go of the idea of the brass ring that it showed up, and fortunately for me, it coincided with getting clean.

My dad was an absentee dad, so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter's life, and she deserved two parents, which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.

People know about the Klan and the overt racism, but the killing of one's soul little by little, day after day, is a lot worse than someone coming in your house and lynching you.

The best advice that was given to me was that I had to be 10 times smarter, braver and more polite to be equal. So I did.

We've come a long way in our thinking, but also in our moral decay. I can't imagine Dr. King watching the 'Real Housewives' or 'Jersey Shore.'

When I'm not working, I like to play golf.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides...

Just 'cause you pour syrup on something doesnt make it pancakes.

No one understands the shift in priorities about having a child in your life... until you have a child in your life.

When I started researching history in the 1960s, a lot of women about whom I've subsequently written were actually footnotes to history. There was a perception that women weren't important. And it's true. Women were seen historically as far inferior to men.

My grandfather was a man when he talked about freedom his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities that then gave you the liberty to do other things.

To burn a CDR of music you like to give as a gift to someone you wish to become closer to is a cold, moist-palmed, mouth-breathing bummer.

I wrote a number of pieces in the year 1966 that were so bad that, although I'm a great collector of my own pieces, I have never collected them.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn't expecting it.

The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength.

There's something to be said for writing in the morning. At other points in the day, you're a bit more defensive.

The beautiful thing about hip hop is its like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip hop way and itll be a hip hop song. Thats the only music you can do that with.

There remains a degree of anti-black intellectualism in entertainment. Middle and upper-middle class blacks have often been portrayed as buffoons in popular culture; witness the characters of Carlton Banks on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' and Braxton P. Hartnabrig on 'The Jamie Foxx Show.'

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that's terrorism, too.

I had always been interested in race and racial justice, but mostly it was with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking at the South from a long way away.

Dogs are forever in the push up postion.

Women politicians take their job seriously and accomplish their duties diligently and sensitively. Only they can understand the problems of women and act as a sounding board for their concerns.

All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.

I dont consider myself a goody goody but I like to be perceived as classy.

Our external environment no longer seems to have any firm boundaries, any limits, or any positive cues about when to stop consuming anything. I mean, there is a reason that people get fat - it's easy and cheap to get high-calorie, tasty food.

If you work hard and you do your best, you can do anything.

We are in favor of tolerance, but it is a very difficult thing to tolerate the intolerant and impossible to tolerate the intolerable.

I love mysteries, and I read them every night before I go to bed.