Every two, three years there is a movie about the Holocaust because they want you to remember and they want you to be reminded of what it was. When was the last time you seen a movie about slavery?

I'd like to say I'm R&B's savior.

The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.

Guys don't adapt as well as women do to getting their heart broken for the first time. It's tragic.

In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?

Give it up for Ray Charles and his beautiful legacy. And thank you, Ray Charles, for living.

I don't know if I'm built for marriage.

If I were an animal, I would be an eagle.

I play a slave. How black is that? I have to wear chains. How whack is that? But don’t worry. I get free. I save my wife and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?

My Grandmother would say, 'Make sure you look good. Make sure you speak well. Make sure you remain that Southern gentleman that I've taught you to be.'

I had that upbringing. Of watching 'Bonanza,' watching 'Hee Haw,' which both black and white would watch. I rode horses. I did gun spinning as a kid. I do these things.

I never planned to win an Oscar. When I auditioned for Ray, I was just thinking about what a great project it would be.

To be the leading man it's about the celebrity and the looks, and it's tough to do that. People who do it great are people like Tom Cruise and Will Smith - they're built for that. I ain't. I'm more of a character guy.

I'm bad on Valentine's Day, but even worse on Christmas. I go shopping at nine o'clock on December 24th every year. Nobody else is there. I'm in Toys'R'Us all by myself. I get there five minutes before closing.

You have a responsibility to your work, to your choices. Once you get to a certain level of quality and commitment, you don't want to go back and make Booty Call 7.

And perfect happiness? Man, that's a...the pool is about 92 degrees, the Jacuzzi is about 102 and an avocado farm.

I've had to be a man since I was 12 or 13. I had a job. And I was playing the piano for people twice my age. Handling responsibility is what makes a man a man.

Having a stage name is like having a Superman complex. I go into the telephone booth as Eric Bishop and come out as Jamie Foxx.

I try to be as honest and open as I am with everything that I do because it’s just, um, It helps me, you know, like whether it’s stand up or singing or act. I just try to stay true.

This whole thing called the internet and all this other kind of stuff is about to go crazy. It's all going to change. But, you know what's not going to change? The talented people.

We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn't have a sort of influence. It does.

She still talks to me now, only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can't wait to go to sleep tonight because we have a lot to talk about. I love you.

It's like church over here. It's like church in here. First of all, give an honor to God and our Lord and Savior Barack Obama.

My worst hair experience was when I was trying to relax my hair and my grandmother did it. It went all straight and I looked like a black Bee Gee.

A woman's posterior is the key to my heart.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

I live young and I keep the weight off of me.

Every single thing in my life is built around race.

(I get to) kill all the white people... How great is that?

I want to thank my daughter, who told me, 'If you don't win, Dad, you're still good,' ... who taught me how to act.

I wish I could take what I'm feeling right now and put it in the water system, and we would all love each other.

If you can, always be appreciative of the ebb and flow of the losses and the wins.

You are what you repeatedly do when things get hard.

Black people are the most talented people in the world.

We can't retract the decisions we've made, we can only affect the decisions we're going to make from here.

If you look at how long the Earth has been here, we're living in the blink of an eye. So, whatever it is you want to do, you go out and do it.

Guys don't adapt as well as women do to getting their heart broken for the first time. It's tragic. I really wanted to be in love, get married, have kids and buy a wood-paneled station wagon for the family. But it didn't work out, and, boy, it wrecked it!

With Django Unchained, when you're dealing with slavery, it's like a gymnastics routine with the highest amount of difficulty. Quentin Tarantino is not going to do a movie that's just going to lay there and be safe. There's going to be twists and flips.

When you sing R&B songs in front of an audience, you look out and there's 85% women. I think R&B music is sort of designed for a man singing to a woman. I don't sing it like the sexy thing, but sort of pseudo-sexy. We rally the women together because it's about being independent and things like that.

Yeah, anytime anybody has a kid, you know how you feel when you have a kid, you look at the world differently because your kid's in the world now. When it's just you, whatever happens happens but now you pay more attention to political things. You pay more attention to things because your daughter or your son has to deal with these circumstances.

My homies that are around me never give me that 'star pass'. I've hung out with some stars who are playing basketball and everyone let's them score all the baskets. Shooting pool, they let them make all the shots. My homies don't let me get away with that.

Connecting with my daughter is the most important thing in my life - the priority. I want to be a man who shows up for her. I want to have such a big influence on her, so that she knows she can call me about anything, which she does.

Actually, music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello, which is a different experience, you're flexing a different muscle, but it's beautiful because it is music.

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.

What's weird is when you meet a girl who is 23 and you are talking to her, even her voice is high-pitched, she's young. You ask her how old she is, she says, 'Twenty-three, how old are you?' and when I tell her I'm 41 it's like I've just told her I have cancer. It's, 'Oh my God, how long have you had that?'

You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really control what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing, and my jokes have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great.

I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction like some people did to the language and the violence. My stepfather was a history teacher at Lincoln High School in Dallas. So, I was already familiar with the N-word and the brutality of slavery. What I was drawn to was the love story between Django and Broomhilda and how he defends and gets the girl in the end. I thought it was just an amazing and courageous project.

A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.

I want to be the person who eventually doesn't have to be in front of the camera. I can be behind the camera and really change things cinematically, and this is giving me an opportunity to do something behind the camera, which I really want to maximize.

It's hard to be a celebrity nowadays. It's not about your track record anymore. If you have a great movie, you're good. If not, people are ready to write you off. I think the only ones who are really winning are people like Will Smith. People go, 'Oh, it's Will Smith. I've got to see him, whatever he's in.'