If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all.

Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.

Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums are pulled from the shelves. Home videos of prepubescent siblings in matching pajamas dance across the television screen.

In sixth grade, my status as a Boy Scout was not something I went out of my way to share. In fact, I spent most of my adolescence attempting to keep it a secret from those who might use it as a source of derision. The off-brown collared shirt and forest-green sash were not something I would have ever been caught wearing in front of my friends.

In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation.

To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

Advocating for affirmative action through the prism of diversity may be more politically palatable, but it will inevitably yield insufficient results.

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

New Orleans taught me that mourning takes many different forms. Where I'm from, mourning is spirited. It is loud.

If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is.

My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.

People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.

While violence is part of what it means to be part of the black diaspora in the United States, that is not all it means to be black.

We inculcate young people with the message that if they don't succeed, it is merely of their own doing. They should have worked harder, we say. They should have made better decisions. This message is especially present in communities of color.

I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic, but it's true.

I kind of follow in the tradition of some folks - some thinkers and scholars I really look up - who reject the idea of intellectual compartmentalization.

I'm not better than anyone else.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.

I treat any scene the same - dialogue, action - you're still creating something in character. It's all acting, fighting.

The sexiest part of the body is the eyes. That's what I believe.

There's certainly a huge element of luck in me ending up where I've ended up.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

I am a big soccer fan, and a very big Liverpool fan.

Very often when you see families it's all perfect and neat, and parenting isn't like that. You do have constant negotiations. Things are ever developing and ever changing, and you constantly have to evaluate how you deal with your kids.

I watch a film and the most important thing to me is what I think of the movie.

I'm the git in the family.

Good dialogue is very important.

I would never give anybody any advice about anything.

If you explode onto the scene at a very young age, there are so many people pulling you in different directions. It takes time to recalibrate and see what's important.

The thing about Hemingway that people forget is that all the stuff he did was at a time where people weren't traveling that much. At 19 he travels to Italy. He goes to the Spanish Civil War. He goes to China, he goes to Africa so at that time to travel that much is really incredible.

I want to be in movies that stand the test of time.

The financial implode is bound to be reflected in the movies that are being made, there's no question.

I love to mix it up. I love to keep doing different things.

You go back to those films of the '40s and '50s and hear the dialogue, the way the people played off each other - the wordplay. I think we've really lost that in movies.

Belfast during the Troubles looked like a different world.

I want to go anywhere and everywhere and explore as much as I can.

I come from a very working-class background.

Rudeness can make me angry.

Obviously, I'm attracted to heavier movies.

I just like to keep challenging myself, keep it varied. It's a craft, and I'm constantly trying to learn and get better at it.

I'm not the kind of actor who goes into exhaustive research for each role.

One of the things I'm most proud of about my career is the fact I've managed to keep options open.

Parenthood and family come first for me, and when I'm not working I'm cool with the Teletubbies.

I think anybody who bets on horses and says they win is probably a liar.

I dread karaoke. I hate karaoke. I can't sing - that is why.

I don't play video games.

I think that Phil Kaufman is one of the best directors that I have come across.

I was not a very fearful kid, really.

I'm a huge fan of 'The Exorcist.'