Building a company isn't that different from climbing a big mountain. You need people helping you traverse treacherous paths and to lift you up when you fall.
People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.
You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.
Each gig should be unique. You're always treading that line between keeping yourself fresh and giving people something they want to hear.
True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely. It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there. It always feels good to be dealing with a period of history or a world that no one else has dealt with.
The painful truth may be that Zimbabwe, the youngest of Africa's former colonies, has simply followed where the continent has led, treading the well-worn path beaten out of the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.
I've had people come stand in front of the treadmill and wait for me to acknowledge their presence so they can speak.
There's a lot of wisdom that my dad and my grandparents and my uncle have been able to impart on me, and what I've treasured the most is I've seen examples in my life of people embracing their creativity, not feeling insecure about their artistic inclinations.
What is it but a cunningly devised scheme to take from one State and to give to another - to replenish the treasury of some of the States from the pockets of the people of the others; in reality, to make them support the governments and pay the debts of other States as well as their own?
The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
I will seek to change some of the European treaties and regulations which penalise Italian people.
I guess I wanted to show people, among other things, that you don't have to be a hero to get through cancer. You can be a craven coward and get through. You have to stay on your medication and take your treatments, that's all.
I've been around some very famous people, but no one has the effect Maradona has; people tremble in his presence.
Our culture is intent on taking the lines out of people's faces - surgically, with costly creams, and with fear and trembling - when, in fact, the opposite should be the case. As artists know, if there is anything behind a face, that face improves with age.
People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.
It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people's lives.
Most young people have tremendous respect for older people's views.
I have tremendous respect for both John Elway and Peyton Manning as people and as quarterbacks in the NFL, but I was not concerned one bit with playing in their shadow.
When you're the president, there's tremendous respect, and everybody goes out of their way respecting you and honoring you... it can be a trap. Nobody says 'Boo' to you, and nobody tells you you're wrong, hardly, if you have the wrong people around you.
I'm on the ground, I've been in swing states, I've been talking to the American people, I've been out there speaking on behalf of Obama's record, I've been in the trenches.
