When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.
We have to mainstream everybody. No matter what their circumstances when they were growing up. Part of that is knowing that after they're finished with school, everybody in this country gets up and goes to work.
Intimacy is a wonderful thing. It's frustrating that growing up I thought it was wrong. It isn't. Exploring your sexuality is important when you're growing up.
David and Dad didn't get along too well growing up. I mean we all got along, but it was harder on David, because David wasn't going to be the son that Dad wanted. But now they're like best friends.
When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.
I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.
It is a different world than when I was growing up, and you started to just kind of maintain at thirty-five and just hope you can hope it together. People are a lot more vital than I am and doing all kinds of things and leading really important movements.
I don't think about that. I wasn't a kid growing up saying one day I'll get an Oscar and make a speech. That wasn't on my mind. So what I do is the best work I can do.
I don't know who I touch and who I don't. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don't have any secrets. I don't know the reasons I've been so well received.
I'm very comfortable as a singer. In fact, I think it's more - I identified my self-esteem, my self more in those ways when I was growing up. I really - it was kind of my calling card as a kid.
