When you're young and everything dramatic is exciting, you start to believe that hype that, in order to be an artist, you have to suffer. I've graduated from that school.

My mother gave me a piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. The correction was the meat, the substance. And then she would sandwich that, sandwich that with another piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. That was very important in shaping and molding our morality, our understanding of ourselves, making sure that we didn’t think we were better than or less than anyone, feeling no more worthy or no less worthy than anyone else.

In my travels all over the world, I have come to realize that what distinguishes one child from another is not ability, but access. Access to education, access to opportunity, access to love.

I sit here before you trying to figure out how to pay a tax debt? If that's not like enough to slavery, I don't know.

In my family, there was not an abundance of wealth, but there was an abundance of love. So there was always humor, and there was joy and there was comfort and there was this environment just to have a good time.

Sometimes we all need to take time and give thanks.

My mother has all my awards, because if I walked downstairs every day and saw all my achievements it would be so easy to become complacent.