The reward for doing right is mostly an internal phenomenon: self-respect, dignity, integrity, and self-esteem. . . . Not doing right may have momentary payoffs but will wreak havoc with your self-esteem, respect from others, and quality of life.
Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.
It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
My father seemed always to know not only what I was doing, but what I was being.
We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.
My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me - and laugh.
The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle.
Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
You have to have all these elements of a feature but with a third of the length. And also the development process - there are so many more steps in getting notes from the studio, getting notes from the network.
If you don't trust everybody on stage with you, then you're in trouble.
The emergence of the independent hip-hop scene has replaced what we called the "underground scene". It's what the underground scene has evolved into: actual businesses.