Well, I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be.

I am very conscious of who I am as an artist and as an inspirational person.

I gave a Christmas party last year - well, two Christmases ago - where I did a Sam Cooke show. I didn't perform as R. Kelly. I performed the Sam Cooke show from 1964, when he performed at the Copacabana.

I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic, sexy, but classy, all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music, then the lyrical content starts to come - you know, the stories and things like that.

When you hear romantic music, it makes you want to take your girl out to dinner or buy her something or take her out in the moonlight or take her on a walk.

'Love Letter' reminds me of 'Chocolate Factory' and 'Happy People.' It's a little bit of both of those, yeah. I just wanted it to be classy, man. And romantic. And maybe 10 percent sexy.

Music is very powerful and can make you feel whatever it is. If you listen to gospel, you're going to feel thankful, and you're going to want to call up people that you hate and tell them that you love them. When you listen to sexual music, it gets you in the mood.

There's a time and place for everything. You're younger, you might want to go to clubs and kick it, but as you get older, you start seeing that life has more meaning to it. The people that you love are the people you want to start trusting and start wanting them to trust you and start respecting them.

They say marriage will change you but it didn't change me. Being in love changed me.

I learnt a whole lot from my mother. About music, relationships, being a good person, loving people, the whole of life. I learnt about everything from her. Every single day I think about her. All through the day.

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

In my lifetime, as a younger man, you were assumed to be an honest person. Your word was your bond, and a handshake was as good as a contract in business.

Bitcoin is not an actual physical coin, and if computers are shut down, you can't buy or sell them. That's why nothing will ever replace gold and silver coins themselves, and all investors should have them at home or in a safe deposit box.

For those of us in the financial world, Black Friday has a strong negative connotation, referring to a stock market catastrophe.

One suggestion my wife and I have used in our personal finance courses we teach at college is simply writing down all expenditures and seeing where the money goes. That alone will cause heads of households to think twice about x, y or z expenditure, and to consider carefully whether they really need something or not.

The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.

You can give your Social Security check to any organization, public or private, or to individuals. You can donate it to your favorite political party. You can give the funds to a student scholarship - for your grandchildren, for example - or to somebody who has a medical need. Or you can invest your government check in free enterprise.

Kids need role models, whether it's baseball players, actors or musicians: people to bring a little positive light into their hearts and minds. We need to be a little kinder to those people because it's not easy being that role model, looked upon as something we are all incapable of being - too perfect.

When you go through hell, your own personal hell, and you have lost - loss of fame, loss of money, loss of career, loss of family, loss of love, loss of your own identity that I experienced in my own life - and you've been able to face the demons that have haunted you... I appreciate everything that I have.

Just do me a favor. Don't call me 'former teen heartthrob,' okay? It's as if they were constantly discussing your second year of college. I'm not back there anymore. I'm living in the present.

All that stuff - 'teen idol' - that wasn't me.

If you're not a daydreamer, you haven't got any imagination.

I found myself very lost after 'The Partridge Family,' and I lost my dad and I lost my manager, and I lived in a bubble, and it took me 15 years to get through that and a lot of psychotherapy, and I'm laughing about it now!

Ninety percent of all people under 30 are in developing countries, and that means that this new access to tech, which is such a positive thing... is also a ticking time bomb of frustration... You get this clear mismatch of opportunity and expectation.

He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression... I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent. I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.

I know that I do have influence over the people who watch me, and it's quite a pressure. I have to stay positive, and while I would never use the words 'role model', I am mindful of the responsibilities that come with a substantial viewership.

It's so hard not to smile.

As cheesy as it sounds, nothing beats a smile and a bit of confidence! As long as you feel good on the inside, you can still look beautiful without any makeup at all.

I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well.

I have very positive memories of reading biographies of unusual Americans as a child.

I think most people agree there is a component of skill in art making; you have to learn grammar before you learn how to write.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

My ideas are not meant to suggest dreams or reality, but a surreal quality.

The crudest thing I've done as a teacher was to require students to write a national anthem for their country and sing it themselves.

'The Polar Express' began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, 'What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?'

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.

The general effect of viewing 'Jumanji' is thrilling. I was able to see on film a thing that at one point had only existed in my imagination. I got to see the images from my book come alive.

If you are a lawyer, and you want to take on easier cases, you can prosecute traffic violations or something. You'd have a very high rate of success, and you probably could sleep more easily at night. But that's not what drives me.

As women, we may not be a minority, but there is a bond that we all share. It is not a bond of geography. Or religion. Or culture. It is a bond of shared experience - experiences that only women go through and struggles that only women face.

Sentencing a political opponent to death after a show trial is no different to taking him out on the street and shooting him. In fact, it is worse because using the court system as a tool of state repression makes a mockery of the rule of law.

Cross-cultural learning and studying abroad can be transformative.

My name means 'hope' in Arabic, and I was born when there was a war in Lebanon.

Success can be as simple as the warm feeling you get when you smile at a stranger, someone you know must be lonely, and having that stranger return your smile. It can be the bringing of a child into the world and raising that child to be a good man or woman.

Every sexy joke of long ago, every flirtation, is being recalled by some women and revised and re-evaluated as sexual harassment. Frivolous accusations reduce, if not eliminate, not only communication between men and women but any kind of playfulness and banter... Where has the laughter gone?

In a country built on the dreams and accomplishments of an immigrant population, a particularly severe wound is inflicted on that principle when an immigration matter is not conducted in accord with the best of our tradition of courtesy and fairness.

I say to the women out there, remember how difficult it was for women like Justice O'Connor starting out. Even though she graduated with top grades, she had to take a job as a legal secretary. Remember how far we have come.

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.

The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people.