A lot of times, we are trapped by our own false sense of security. You can do whatever it is you put your mind to. Your goal is to find your purpose.

I always approach every play based on the cast. When Denzel and I did 'Fences,' I didn't go to rehearsals and say, 'OK, James Earl Jones did a wonderful job in '87. Let me see if you can come close to James Earl Jones.'

The first 45 or 50 years of the regional theater movement, all these folks, they built these theaters. The job of the next generation is to maintain them.

Broadway, in my opinion, is a microcosm of America. Those challenges that we have in our country, I think we still have those challenges on the Broadway stage. I think there are far too few African-American directors working on Broadway.

When I first went to college, I went into physics, and my goal was to help perfect nuclear fusion so I could solve the energy crisis and global warming. I probably would have done it, too, if I'd stuck to it.

In the past, biology has been a backwater type of activity - a bunch of nerds in a lab. Now the sheer potential of biology to re-program our physical world is a new reality for everyone.

In elementary school, I did well in science, but I was a poor writer. When I got to high school, I failed all my courses.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.