My hope would be that, as we're moving through the world right now, we're able to get that psychological or emotional peace by seeing very concretely our kids doing better and being more hopeful and having greater opportunities.
And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Maria, whether it lasts just through today and a part of tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.
Learning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it.
I really love sharing my gift with others. At the same time, I'm just a normal kid having fun and that's what life is all about-having fun at the same time as helping people.
I choose to ignore hell in my life. When I was a little kid I asked my Dad "Am I going to go to hell?" because I'd heard about hell. And he said, "Nothing you're gonna do will get you into hell." And so I got to ignore it.
I moved around a lot as a kid, and when you're always entering new places at that age, you kind of have to learn how to adapt yourself, and I felt a really powerful way to do that was to make people laugh.
I don't want to exaggerate; having as many African American men as we've had in the criminal-justice system, and the amount of time it takes for the damage done by that to wash through our society and our communities, the disadvantages born out of kids being undiagnosed with mental-health problems early, or not getting the kind of exposure to reading and math when they're 4 or 5 or 6 years old, that carries a cost.
I don't know what the hell I'm doing; I like what I've been doing. I believe in what I've done in the past; I hope my kid enjoys the movies I've made and enjoys some of the movies in the future.
Our system works. Over time, people will live better and better. We have a system that unleashes human potential, and now China has a system that unleashes human potential. We will have interruptions. We overshoot and undershoot sometimes, but your kids and grandkids will live better than you. Over time, we move ahead at a pretty damn rapid rate.
If I had kids, my kids would hate me. They would have ended up on the equivalent of the Oprah show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would've probably been them.
Ever since I started acting, I've always spoken to our people about identity. I've spoken to kids, telling them: "Where do I get my strength to push through the barriers to get me where I'm at today? It's my culture and my traditions, you know?