If I can't eat the meal in a restaurant, and the waiter asks, 'Is everything all right, Madam?', I tell them that I'm on a diet.

If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA. I think it's fascinating.

There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.

'Grace' is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come - you really just have to stew in your life until it's time to go. But sometimes, somebody else's faith in you can do wonders.

Certain emotions just take you to the notes - being furious, heroic, sad, erotic, when rain comes.

Grace is what matters in anything - especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. That's a quality that I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching out for the gun too quickly. It keeps you from destroying things too foolishly. It sort of keeps you alive.

I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am. And it makes me sad.

I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad.

Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.

I'm sick of all these labels and these manufactured subdivisions of music that don't even exist. And even though I'm pierced myself, I'm sick of everyone equating body piercing with musical courage. If you ask me, it takes a lot more than that.

I think I drift toward sad love songs.

When sparrows build and the leaves break forth, My old sorrow wakes and cries.

The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.

The connection to place, to the land, the wind, the sun, stars, the moon... it sounds romantic, but it's true - the visceral experience of motion, of moving through time on some amazing machine - a few cars touch on it, but not too many compared to motorcycles. I always felt that any motorcycle journey was special.

Underwater, I experience space with my body. I'll see a school of fish gathering and moving together and I'll exclaim, 'This is architecture.'

My beginnings in the Southwest are clear and palpable. My beginnings here made me pay attention to where the sun is, where the winds are, the power of the site... I take that baggage with me.

The body moves through space every day, and in architecture in cities that can be orchestrated. Not in a dictatorial fashion, but in a way of creating options, open-ended sort of personal itineraries within a building. And I see that as akin to cinematography or choreography, where episodic movement, episodic moments, occur in dance and film.

I try to understand place on a deeper level than just the physical or environmental aspects. It includes cultural and intellectual forces, too. It's an inclusive approach that brings in many disciplines and sees place as a dynamic thing.

A building that has great environmental responsibility is a political animal in a way because it becomes promotional of a cause. I think that kind of advocacy through architecture is really good.

Anything I do informs how I design. I wouldn't isolate any one activity. Everything I do feeds back to my life, and my life is expressed in my work.

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction - in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.

I represent the kids who come from nothing but who understand it all and love it all. That's what I represent - those are the cool kids, you know, the kids of tomorrow, because who would've known that I'd be who I am today? We are the kids of tomorrow.

Fashion is almost like a religion, for me at least.

There was a time when someone would get on a plane and request to move their seat just because the person sitting next to them was of a different ethnicity or religion or nationality. But I don't think my generation wants that. That's how it used to be.

New York gave me hell for that 'Purple Swag,' man. They didn't respect me until 'Peso.'

I'm getting my respect as a video director. The fashion industry respects me and knows who I am.

I wanted to appeal to people who've never really listened to hip-hop or really given it a chance before. I've also tried to incorporate all my favorite lifestyle things in the music. Of course, 'Fashion Killa' is one of peoples' favorites because it just expresses how much I like fashion.

I strive for perfection, but I'm not perfect. But what I can say is my morals are totally different than any other 24-year-old rapper my age now. I look at life totally different. A whole other aspect. I have different views and morals on life in general. And opinions.

Design my own line? No, I just like the culture.

Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open.

I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.

I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But even bad people had good manners in the old days, and manners hold a community together, and manners hold a family together; in a way, they hold the world together.

If women really want equality, we have to wipe the slate clean. It no longer matters in the largest sense what men did to us for the last 200 or 300 years.

Because society would rather we always wore a pretty face, women have been trained to cut off anger.

Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes.

Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

You gotta lose 'em some of the time. When you do, lose 'em right.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for... reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living.

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.

They say Yogi Berra is funny. Well, he has a lovely wife and family, a beautiful home, money in the bank, and he plays golf with millionaires. What's funny about that?