I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn't express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Coming up in the streets, I had to learn how to read people early on. I'm a very analytical person. I observe a lot of the things that people don't notice.

I always knew who I was, and I always ran from my true purpose... I know what my job is. And I always ran from it.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

The beauty of 'Parenthood' is that it's a blue-collar working family, and it reflects attitudinal shifts that occur within people and families.

I love my father very much. I attribute so much of the person I am today to the values that he and my mother set for us, and the way they encouraged us every day of our lives to go out and find what we love doing and to fulfill our potential and really be happy.

Just being raised in a home where my mother, from as early as I can remember, always taught me to be thinking about other people first, basically that our service was going to be the measure of our success.

My background wasn't an issue for her or for her family. But if someone had said to my parents back in the 1970s that one of their children would have a mixed marriage, I think they'd have thought that was very unusual.