There was no one around me who didn't work hard.

My mother worked in factories, worked as a domestic, worked in a restaurant, always had a second job.

And I always found that the harder I worked, the better my luck was, because I was prepared for that.

As a child, I loved to read books. The library was a window to the world, a pathway to worlds and people far from my neighborhood in Philadelphia.

That's when I hit the ground. So in the instant that that round landed and blew me in the air, I had those separate and distinct thoughts. The guy who was standing right next to where I had been standing had a hole in his back I could put my fist into.

I'd watch my father get up at 5 o'clock and go down to the Eastern Market in Detroit to do the shopping for his restaurant, and get that business going and then go out on his vending machine business.

I taught sixth grade for three and a half years.