My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work.

Happiness isn't a position. It's a trajectory.

In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But what is happiness?

In the perfect world, no one would need pre-nups. But all too often, a misty-eyed romancer at the altar transforms into a vengeful, avaricious fiscal predator when the marriage goes south.

I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt.

The temple of art is built in words.

Ideals are the world's masters.

Joys divided are increased.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

There is no royal road to anything, one thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Calmness is the cradle of power.

Responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power.

Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.

I love my family very much. I wish I could see them a little more often than I do. But we understand because we're a show business family and we all work.

The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work.

And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.

There were times when I had great times with my brothers, pillow fights and things, but I was, used to always cry from loneliness.

The Bee Gees who are brilliant, I just love great music.

I don't understand why the press is so interested in speculating about my appearance, anyway. What does my face have to do with my music or my dancing?

It's a complete lie, why do people buy these papers? It's not the truth I'm here to say. You know, don't judge a person, do not pass judgement, unless you have talked to them one on one. I don't care what the story is, do not judge them because it is a lie.

Everyone who knows me will know the truth, which is that my children come first in my life and that I would never harm any child.

I just wish I could understand my father.

No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won.

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

Be a dreamer. If you don't know how to dream, you're dead.

I will thank God for the day and the moment I have.

I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.

Now, I look at where I am now and I know what I wanna to do. What I would like to be able to do is to spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe some hope to others.

And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That's important to me too.

Humans have a sense of spontaneity and emotion. We have a dichotomy between grief and happiness.

Some people have strong opinions about women with short hair. They find it very masculine and severe. Others think it's soft and feminine and makes your features stand out. It can be an Audrey Hepburn kind of thing.

It definitely wasn't like, 'Hey, I'm going to steal that, and nobody's going to know.' The original 'T.R.O.Y.' came out in 1992, and it was like a 20th anniversary kind of thing. All of those intentions were there for it to be resurrecting a classic for a new generation. I tried to honor it.

I don't have to work on it. I'm naturally a writer. The rapping and writing, they can go hand-in-hand - but rapping is an art that you have to practice and master, so I worked at it for a long time.

Reggae, oh man. It's the ultimate music. The positivity. The musicality. The whole cultural expressionism of it. The danceability. Just the cool factor. The melody factor. Some of it comes from a religious place. If there were a competition of who makes the best religious music, it would definitely be the Rastafarian reggae.

In Chicago, you have an absence of strong family units, and that absence gets filled by gangs. You have a failure in the school system, after-school programs and other social programs to help keep kids off the streets. Amnesty International speaks to that in some way, by keeping these issues in the forefront.

I think it is important that you have people from all different vanguards, from all different walks of society and different viewpoints to be focused on the struggle for equality and democracy. We need as many champions for the cause and as many events as possible to help keep this in focus.

That should be the measure of success for everyone. It's not money, it's not fame, it's not celebrity; my index of success is happiness.

This game wears on you. It tears you down. It's perpetual motion for some people who've achieved a level of independence, like Madonna and Jay-Z - they don't need to do music anymore. But there's people who need it. And in that need, that's when it's tough and it tears you to pieces.

If you are an open-minded and tolerant Muslim, you have enough knowledge to question the moves of a Christian governor or even the Ku Klux Klan. They called themselves a Christian organization, but how is that possible since Jesus didn't do that?

People don't understand that where I come from, everyone is either a convict, been in jail, been in a gang, is a hooligan of some sorts, but those are my brothers, my family and the people that I travel with. Those are the people that I roll with.

I trust people to be human. Sometimes you do things that make amazing amounts of sense; sometimes you do things that don't make any sense whatsoever.

Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

An award means a lot to me. It brings happiness along with a kind of fear. It brings fear because the award is the responsibility which audiences have put on us. So a singer winning an award should always try to give best of him to the audiences.

Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with.

If given a chance, I would really want to explore the monuments in Delhi, like Qutub Minar and the forts. I have been there as a child, but now I want to go back and understand the history and significance behind them. We take all of these things for granted in life.