I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid.
No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.
I like women who haven’t lived with too many men. I don’t expect virginity but I simply prefer women who haven’t been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. You’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.
History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us.
In principle the first thing on the stream would be my birth certificate, a little electronic version of that, my parents would put my school records, health records, whatever of their child onto the stream. And the stream continues to flow forward through time.
An important impression was my father's one Sabbatical year, spent in England and Europe in 1937.
You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.
You know what that big number was? It was 1957. It's not the year I was born. I'm a little older than that. I wish it was the year I was born. It was the year one of my favorite books was written: 'Atlas Shrugged.' Ayn Rand.
The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
For me, clothing is nothing without the story behind it. Everything I own evokes some kind of memory.
History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
What we leave behind in this life is the memory of who we were and what we did. An imprint, no more.
Since I was a kid, I was listening to hip-hop.
I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from.
I didn't do drugs, I never did do drugs. Never. I don't have any story of drugs, you know, to speak of. Never did drugs, never was interested in drugs and then I wasn't interested in the people around the drugs.
I came into the world at the same time as the auto, if you will.
My parents were both from Scotland, but had been resident in Lower Canada some time before their marriage, which took place in Montreal; and in that city I spent most of my life.
Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history... this is what makes you strong. It's not looking out that's going to do that - it's looking in.
I came from a working-class family. My dad was in a union. I never forgot what it was like to be a private.
I took the 'Lee' from my grandparents, who took care of me during the day while my mom was away working.
There are stories we take on from our culture, and there are stories based on our own personal history. Some of those stories lock us in limiting beliefs and lead to suffering, and there are others that can move us toward freedom.
You can't change what Memphis means to me, what Memphis has meant to me. It's a special place for me. There's no doubt.
You look back and you remember the good, the bad and the ugly.
When I was a kid, I didn't know how I got into acting.
