I love it when the left and when the president say 'Don't try to impose your values on us you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling to your guns.' They have values too. Our values are based on religion based on life. Their values are based on a religion of self.

When you come from desperate poverty and that's exactly what I come from you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never ever anything like a solution.

I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics pure and simple.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

I don't blame folks for not wanting to put me in their movies or whatever. I understand if their audiences had an association with me.

I haven't got as much money as some folks but I've got as much impudence as any of them and that's the next thing to money.

There was one thing my daddy wouldn't tolerate in any shape form or fashion and that was being unkind or rude to somebody. That was just very important to my folks. And as it turns out that was a legacy that he left me that money can't buy is how to be able to treat people.

Many folks think they aren't good at earning money when what they don't know is how to use it.

A lot of times black folks look for love in all the wrong places. You're always looking for somebody to love you be accepted and there's the insecurities that are even transmitted through rap. Everyone is trying to aim to please too much.

Most organizations should be pro-active but philanthropists concerned with poverty should deliberately be reactive learning from the efforts of ordinary folks who tired of looking the other way as their communities fell apart.