If you don't break a hole through the brick wall, don't just start digging a new hole. Keep going until you break through that wall.

When you read a book, and it's really, really beautiful, you're so engaged you forget to breathe. If you're in a car accident, and everything moves slowly, you can be shocked into the present. The past and the future disappear.

You don't expect a 94-year-old white guy to pick "Dope," which was an awesome movie not even close to being considered by the Academy. And that's what it's all about, like, promoting people who might not otherwise get promoted and celebrating people who might not get celebrated.

I mean people are sexist and racist and homophobic and violent. But I don't think of the rappers as being any more sexist or racist or homophobic than their parents. Certainly less, in all those cases, less homophobic or racist or sexist, and then less gangster than our government. It's stuff that people normally don't speak on, subjects they don't speak on, and ideas they kind of keep to themselves.

The reason I got a break in Hollywood when I moved here a few years ago is my good buddy, who I was on the beach with when he was a publicist, is now the chairman of HBO.

The conditions of suffering that exist today in our impoverished communities are not acceptable. The reflection of those conditions are less concerning to me. And I work everyday about changing the conditions.

If you talk about the prison-industrial complex, I've fought against the prison-industrial complex when I called for a repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws. The biggest impediment to get the laws changed was the lobbyists. Whether you're talking about healthcare, jobs going overseas, or tax reform, you're always coming up against lobbyists.