For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin' down there and making that my stomping ground... That was a big thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So I got the best of both worlds.

I'm not a gay rights activist.

I take cabs if I need to get somewhere or I take car service. I don't drive, I wouldn't mind riding a bike... People think that because you become an entertainer you gotta have this rock star thug image. I'm an artist, man. I'm going to live like an artist.

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.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.

It's funny how it usually works out that I end up dying. It sort of works out, because by the time I die, I'm usually tired of working on that particular movie, so I look forward to it.

When Dickens arrives in the United States in November of 1867, he's already in questionable health. So by the end of the trip, he was really in failing condition, and really, he would never recover completely after this point, and you could sort of draw a straight line to his ultimate decline and death.

I had a sense of mortality since I was a little girl, which has to do with my father, who nearly died eight times in my childhood. He had eight heart attacks.