You can't break poor people mentality. Once you grow up poor, you don't take anything for granted. It can have the negative side also because you can never truly be relaxed.

Whatever your dream is, every extra penny you have needs to be going to that.

I grew up in the church, Resurrection Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was that grandmother at the church, the one always at the church, always putting on the events. It was deeply instilled in me that every action, everything I create, everything I say and do in the world is inexorably bound to the lives of everybody I come in contact with - and it's my responsibility to put things into the world that have a positive influence on humanity.

You play a part in every aspect of your life going the way you want or not going the way that you want. It has very little to do with other people.

You can't be scared to die for the truth. The truth is the only thing that is ever going to be constant.

The person that works the hardest wins.

For me, the greater purpose of the story is just to illuminate some pattern of human truth.