You never know what's going on in someone's life. You never know what's really going on behind what they present.

My friend is a former race car driver, so he races for Mercedes, and I root for him. I have a car that I love to race, I'll take it to the track.

Fundamentally, we all want the same thing. We want to love. We want to be loved, and we want to matter.

My first two books, 'Letters to a Young Brother' and 'Letters to a Young Sister,' were... distributed pretty widely. Judges in juvenile justice facilities started citing the book as required reading.

Once you have a felony conviction on your record, one of the most difficult things to do is to break the cycle of recidivism.

The word 'courage,' one of my favorite words, the root or the etymology of that word is 'cour,' which means heart. I think true courage is actually following your heart and not getting or succumbing to what other people's definition of what your life should be. Live your life.

You deserve a great life. I want to see you become unreasonably happy. And you can. And you will.

I champion the idea of being more conscious. I call it being an active architect of your own life. Building your life like an architect builds a structure.

You can live a healthy lifestyle and do the best to be aware of your body and conscious, and that's what I attempt to do.

Many of us are in are in our own prisons that aren't made of iron bars.

If you can't get excited about living life, then what are you doing?

My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.

I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.

Without writers, none of the entertainment would exist. It starts with writers. Writers are the most important piece of the entire puzzle.

The most impactful place that I've been to where I was just completely awestruck, happy, moved is Victoria Falls between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is probably the most beautiful and romantic place in the world.

So many of our young women today, they're growing up without a father, but they're still thirsty for that and desiring positive male love.

All work and no play make any forensic pathologist a dull boy.

Poverty existed before January 20, 2008, OK? Before President Obama took office.

On 'CSI: NY,' the audience knew I was a really good guy, and I caught the bad guy.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a partner and doing the things to have one. To protect ourselves, we have to say, 'I don't need one.'

Dr. King said, 'We are all tied together in a garment of mutual destiny.' Which says to me no matter how well I may be doing in Hollywood, if a young brother or sister in Louisiana, the South Bronx, the South Side of Chicago, South Central Los Angeles - is not doing well, then I'm not doing very well.

On the male side of my family, cancer has been very insidious, and so I'm just attempting to live a lifestyle that doesn't follow in their footsteps.

Screening for colon cancer can stop cancer in its tracks.

I would suggest that folks who have a platform of so-called celebrity, to the extent that they don't use that platform, or if they just use it for their own self-aggrandizement, it is certainly fed in a way that it goes to waste.

I've been trying to make a difference as an actor. I want to play characters that move people, have them look at their lives differently, or give them an escape.

Certainly, those of us in the entertainment industry, we are part of creating fear in people - 'fear' for me stands for 'false evidence appearing real.' We create fantasy, and in certain ways that's wonderful because it allows people to escape. But it can suck people into wanting to achieve something that isn't real.

When it comes to African Americans and African American actors, Hollywood has always felt that if you can make us laugh, that's fine, but we don't need to see you do a 'Schindler's List,' where there's no jokes or music or comedic through-line.

Being a celebrity doesn't have an iota of value when you're looking death in the eye.

Since I'm in the entertainment business, I think I have to hold a mirror up to myself and say, 'Am I complicit in miseducating and misinforming our youth by participating in this business, or can I use this business to re-educate and uplift?'

There are so many actors that I meet that don't act enough. Definitely take class, definitely train - that's the most important thing you do. Build your craft. Become better.

There will always be crazy things that happen in our lives, but love is the central connector. If we commit to love and partnership, the other stuff doesn't matter.

You can't build anything with a flimsy foundation. Friendship is the foundation.

The thing about our country, Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, we all want to help. There's real folks who want to help. The problem is, they don't know how. They don't know how to get involved.

I believe we all have the capacity to be masters of many things, and there's nothing that we can't do. You can be a great actor and also be a great writer. There's so many things that all of us have the capacity to do. But somehow, life tries to convince us that we'd be lucky to do even one thing well, and I disagree.

People are afraid of an unorganized, wasteful government.

Part of the problem I find with money books is that there's this whole set of money books that make you feel almost guilty to spend a dollar.

At the end of a down day on Wall Street, we all need to be able to sleep peacefully at night. That comfort won't come from our bank balance.

The longer you hold a dollar, the longer you hold money, the more valuable it becomes over time. So the younger you are, the more ability you have to hold money longer term.

We all have inherited so many types of fears, whether they're race-based, culture-based, gender-based, age-based, family-based. And then we get comfortable with these fears.

I love being athletic and doing things that are active, even when I'm traveling.

It's important for someone like me - who's known Obama for 20 years - to speak the truth. I know him to be a Christian man. I know him to be one of the greatest patriots.

In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.

We all have choices we have to make, and with those choices come certain sacrifices.

What I've found in doing research is that men want a relationship that feels fun. In other words, they want a relationship that has qualities or elements of their same-sex relationships - just like women do, too.

When I was dealing with cancer, I was working on a book about finances. I realized that the same methodology that the doctors were using to cure me, you could use to cure your finances. Health and wealth are so linked, it's amazing.

I'm not telling anyone, 'Quit your job and be homeless to go for your dream.'

I'm not the biggest star in the world, but I do have a platform, and if I can use that platform to help somebody else, why wouldn't I?

With my first book, 'A Letter to a Young Brother,' I figured it would be my only book I was ever going to write. What happened with that is a lot of young men would reach out to me.

I studied theater in college, and I absolutely knew that I loved acting, and I knew that I loved theater.

I'm really proud of the characters I've been able to play. Certainly, playing the character on 'CSI' as Dr. Sherman Hawkes is a wonderful stereotype-busting role.