One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.
More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.
You don't build a bond without being present.
When you are mute, you become a good listener - it's all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound.
Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.
Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it.
When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.
My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.
The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college.
The goal wasn't to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about - the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was.
I think stutterers are funny. And I know it's rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is okay because I know why they're funny. They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.
Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.
Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.
I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.
You weren't going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.
I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.
Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, 'Okay, I'll do that.'
