When you've been raised in care rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music with rap: when I was in care it meant a whole lot more than that.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

For me I don't feel it is a success in the career to be the pretty woman career success comes from being characters who tell us something about the truth.

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

Put paying your dues and all that puts so much into being a success. You have an understanding of what it's about being on your own for three or four years and living day to day on $3 or living in an apartment with no electricity.

If there's no fire there's no scream. If there's no scream then no one hears you and no one comes to help you in the first place. The depth of my struggle has definitely determined the height of my success. To be able to teach my kids not just about success but about the struggle that comes with it.

If there is any secret to my success I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel and therefore I think my readers care about them.

A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece anywhere is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.

My store Wine Library outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn't due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward making connections and building relationships.

The one thing that makes me feel super lucky about my financial success is that I have a housekeeper.

When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been I'm not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore.

I think the measure of your success to a certain extent will be the amount of things written about you that aren't true.

Philanthropy is the thing that I am really excited about and having success means I can do more.

The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask so it's basically down to you and what you want or need.

Real success is being totally indulgent about your own trip. You put your blinders on about the garbage and go full speed ahead.

Which is - you know like check it out I'm pretty young I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book right?

I feel lucky because I was a nerd which I talk about in the book but I had academic success so through that because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school.

This weird thing happens when you're in a movie that has some level of success. People start offering you all kinds of things and they just expect you to do them because they'll be good for your career. It's not about the project's integrity or anything like that.

Success is always something completely different to people. I feel like I've succeeded if I'm doing something that makes me happy and I'm not lying to anybody. I'm not doing that now so I feel really good about myself.

I think the success of democracy is not really police security it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.

I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.