The fact that there aren't an abundance of African-American males that are getting lead roles [and] that are getting roles that have prominence on the big screen. [It's] the same thing from behind the camera; maybe even worse. Coming up, when you're black and you want to direct somebody says, "Oh, you're Spike Lee" or "You're John Singleton."

You see somebody like me, as young as I was at the time, driving around the inner city of Newark, and to them [police] it doesn't make sense. I've been illegally searched [and had] my car illegally searched. [I've] been handcuffed for no reason. You get in enough of those situations.

I think everyone starts in the mailroom at some point! It's a right of passage. Your boss has to throw something at you and order you around for at least two years.

As an actor, you never want to feel like a tool. You never want to feel like, "Hey, just come here, say this, stop here, look this way," and that's it. You want to have a little input.

As human beings, why does it take somebody to feel like they're close to us for us to see their humanity? Why can't we see the humanity in people that are distant from us?

I've always been a fan of AXE and when I heard about their new product and they sent it out to me for me to try and smell and I was like, oh man. It's hard for me to talk about something I don't care about or I'm not really into but once I tried it out for myself I was like, wow okay I can get into this [ collaboration].

You substitute certain things from your own personal life to get you to that mental place and that emotional state. At that time [Brian Robbins] went for the home run, the grand slam [in "Hardball"].