Not unlike our country's history, my personal history was founded upon an unfortunate history of racial conflict between black and white.

I feel like we haven't dealt with the ghosts of America's past, and the way to deal with it is to confront it, so every time people see me, I want them to be reminded and to confront that ghost.

I think it's the job of the artist to reflect the times and also reflect his or her views of the world.

A classic man is a distinguished man. He cares about taste and his craft. He's all about the simple model that I live by - eat, drink, be swanky, and have fun getting the job done. He makes sure that he's excellent in all things and that he cares about his neighborhood immensely.

I have a lot of surrogate parents, but there's no one like your mother.

Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night.

I suppose the book I really remember loving as a child was one called 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, about a gang of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Sixties Oklahoma. I grew up in the Eighties in Nottinghamshire, but this tale of troubled, but essentially good, kids - or 'greasers' - was something I completely connected with.

There is a natural rhythm to parent-child interactions, including the fact that some parental insights prove poignant and veridical decades after they were first shared with us.