All I knew growing up was that my father was married to and loved my momma, period. He worked hard, made some money, and put it on the dresser. She spent it on the family, and he went out and earned some more. He taught me the most about love.

To be No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, well, that's alarming. Having been a stand-up comedian, I think it's surprising to a lot of people that I had the insight I had.

Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you've got something to share.

The best timed joke or the best timed phrase comes at spontaneous moments and just relies on me as the host to be very quick, and that's what I do.

Perhaps I will stay in Chicago and operate on human beings instead of on dogs. From a business standpoint, it would be excellent. But, as I hate medical practice, I would like better to make little money in doing scientific work than a great deal in doing surgical operations.

I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.

After about 20 years of the real estate industry - where we had built it up from a little one-off, just five-agent operation - we built that that into a four-office, 65-agent, multimillion-dollar firm. At that point, I relocated to my ranch in eastern Montana and really thought that I was going to spend much of my time in ranching.

I've never worried about what audiences would accept or had a game plan regarding the career. I never had an idea of how I should look to my fans or anybody else.