If you don't ask, you don't get.

Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Sometimes, I feel I am really blessed to be blind because I probably would not last a minute if I were able to see things.

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

You can't base your life on other people's expectations.

Let us come together before we're annihilated.

Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.

Minds ripen at very different ages.

If you don't ask, you don't get.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision.

Eyes lie if you ever look into them for the character of the person.

Do you know, it's funny, but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage.

For the most part, I feel really comfortable with what I've given to the people. I want to give it to them again.

God gave me life to continue to do things that I would never have done.

I am not a normal man.

I am what I am. I love me! And I don't mean that egotistically - I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it.

I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.

I used to say that if something happened to my mother, I wanted to die with her. That's because I loved her so much. I want to live so I can carry out the essence of what she has shown me: kindness and goodness.

I'm concerned about how accessible guns are.

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

My father really was not the dominant person who raised the family, it was my mother who raised the family.

The right to bear arms? What about the right to live?

This is like one thing that I've tried to do, and I think successfully, that when you realize that nothing really belongs to you, you begin to appreciate having an understanding of just where your head is at, and you feel so much better.

Time is long but life is short.

What I'm not confused about is the world needing much more love, no hate, no prejudice, no bigotry and more unity, peace and understanding. Period.

You know, I always when people ask me, like, what is my most favorite song, I quote Duke Ellington, when they would ask him, what's his favorite composition? And I say, I haven't written it yet. Because, you know, there are different songs for different occasions.

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle

Exploitation mutilation mutations confirmation to the evils of the world.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesnt mean he lacks vision.

You cant base your life on other peoples expectations.

Very superstitious writings on the wall very superstitious ladders bout to fall Thirteen month old baby broke the lookin glass seven years of bad luck the good things in your past.

Mama was my greatest teacher a teacher of compassion love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love, and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

Today, 30-year-olds are becoming social entrepreneurs.

I've never really considered doing stand up, but I have done readings/spoken word things fairly often in which I'll just tell a bunch of stories and run off at the mouth. I'm a big tangent person.

From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only grow worse when they are kindly treated.

I've never been this loud personality. I don't dominate the room when I walk into it. I save that for stage.

When it comes to art money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

It's always the compliments from people you love that mean so much.

I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check - it forces me to work harder at what I'm interested in.

For me, it's not about winning an award. It's also about not even being nominated

I am always the 'good guy,' and I take on the idiotic jerks of the nation.

If a fact does not modify your logic on being known, either you don't believe the fact or it is not a fact.

I look at all my projects as a stair step to the next. My goal is to always get better and better.

Monotony reveals our limitations.

I'm so OCD about prep work and learning lines and stuff.

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to. It has a much more percussive rhythm to it.