I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
I know that I came into the world with what I call 'big dharma' - with a blueprint to teach self-reliance and a positive loving approach to large numbers of people all over the globe. I am ever so grateful for the circumstances of my life that allowed me to be pretty much left alone and to develop as I was so intended in this incarnation.
If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.
I can't say that my disability has helped my work, but it has allowed me to concentrate on research without having to lecture or sit on boring committees.
In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.
From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That's how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.
God has opened many doors of opportunity throughout my lifetime, but I believe the greatest of those doors was allowing me to be born in the United States of America.
Throughout a lot of my 20s, my sexual allure and power was one of the most important things about me, my currency.
I'm in great company and some may say that the underexposure has added to my allure and the staying power of me as a MC and The Roots as a band.
Women who stay true to themselves are always more interesting and beautiful to me: women like Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Anna Magnani - women who have style, chic, allure and elegance. They didn't submit to any standard of beauty - they defined it.
If you are an investor, I hope that you will stay with me for three, four, ten years. But if you ask me to make profits in ways that I have to change my allure, I won't do that. I won't lose my identity.
I've become really good at turning down the boring, pretty girl roles, the trophy wife, supermodel, beautiful girlfriend roles. I mean, playing somebody who's perfect holds no allure for me, whatsoever. It's just boring.
My declining allure is a source of great sadness to me.
I suppose the desire to go to town helped make me ambitious, and the allure of the worlds that came in over the radio also helped. But the rewards of growing up on a farm were far greater in many ways than life in town.
But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becoming a character through clothes.
The freedom of just going into the booth and spitting and freestyling to release whatever was on your mind was alluring to me.
With each new pair of shoes, each new wrist-watch, each new Walkman or moisture-wicking wonder-material that runners put on, the sport became more alluring to me and to millions of others.
Why do I find the fantasy - husband, family, kids - exhausting instead of alluring? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have a life?
I was at the AMC Century City movie theater with my mom, and we were walking through the lobby, and these girls came up to me, and they said, 'Are you Dallas from 'Austin & Ally' - and I was like, - yeah, yeah. And they were like, 'Can we have a picture with you?' and I was like, 'Yeah sure of course.'
Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.
