Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to live a life full of purpose and intention. Sometimes when we play sports and athletics you can lose your purpose.
I feel like kids don't dream big enough. With art being taken out of school, it's important to know you can create as well.
Nothing good happens after 11. If you can't get a date before 11 o'clock, you need to go home and you need to work on yourself.
My ultimate goal is to live forever, but the only way to live forever is to create and you always want to be there for your kid.
What if Macauley Culkin were black in 'Home Alone?' Most people would write it differently... but I would write it the same way.
When you look at me see the father, the awesome dad, the author, film director, business owner, champion, friend, Hufflepuff beast.
I want to be so far removed from the idea that it's like, 'Oh, right, he won a Super Bowl.' Football is only a small part of your life.
Playing with my brother on the Patriots would have been amazing, but at the same time I feel like my work as a creator is more important.
There was plays where I had to do certain things, but I wouldn't even know who caught the ball because I was so focused on getting my job done.
I'm not building gyms. I'm not interested in building football fields or doing football camps. I'm interested in doing film camps and coding camps.
I think sometimes in life we learn that we're only allowed to have one dream, but you can have more than one dream. You can accomplish more than one thing.
I'm trying to build something that lasts forever. If it's tied to my legacy as an athlete, then when I'm gone, it will have no momentum or can't keep selling.
Playing in the NFL isn't really - and shouldn't have to be - every black boy's dream. But black boys don't always know that their dreams off the field matter.
When I won the Super Bowl I thought I was going to be, like, extremely happy. But then I really just felt like, 'Well, this is it?' I felt like I got bamboozled.
As young black boys in Alief, Texas, my friends and I often spent afternoons imagining ourselves scoring the game-winning touchdown at the end of the Super Bowl.
I thought Willy Wonka was brilliant. He had all kinds of candy. Who doesn't like chocolate and candies? Everybody wanted a Gobstopper. I just think he's brilliant.
If you play sports, use sports. So many of our kids get used by the game and then get nothing out of it. Use it as a tool to open up other doors that you want to open in life.
Black fathers are often disappointed if their sons aren't good at sports. Not excelling at sports as a black boy meant not being cool - even weirder, it meant not really being black.
A lot of players act one way with teammates, one way with reporters, another way for fans, another for their friends. I'm just me all the time. I'm normal. Everyone else in the NFL is weird.
I've always wanted to create. I didn't ever want to just be a football player, so I'm just bringing all these childhood dreams together to try to accomplish the things I want to do before I die.
If I write a book, it has to be so awesome. It has to be next level, to prove mysel. Just like if you are an athlete and you want to rap, you better bring the bars. Don't come in with nursery rhymes.
There aren't many children's books about black characters that are just going on adventures. My library has over 2,000 children's books in it, and most of the protagonists are either white or creatures.
If you ask a kid what their dreams are, they will give you a list that is as long as I am tall. Once you get older that list gets shorter and shorter, so dreams shrink. I think dreams should grow as you get older.
I love to read because I know that for a long time ancestors weren't allowed to. I love to write. Because for a long time my people weren't 'allowed' to. So I'm going to write my books, my apps and tell my stories.
I feel like there are not a lot of us, in terms of African American owners or creators. I'm trying to get kids and communities to think not just about playing for the team, but owning the team. You don't always have to be the worker bee.
Dr. Seuss said, 'No one can be you-er than you,' and Oscar Wilde said, 'Be yourself because everyone else is taken.' So I just try to continue to be who I am and don't change that. And I'm a little chameleon, so I can fit in wherever I am.
The way we have been programmed and conditioned to think about the black kid being an athlete, it's like every young black boy people would see say 'what sport do you play?' instead of just asking 'what do you do?' 'What are you interested in?'
I don't want to inspire the next generation of tight ends or linebackers to play the game. If I could inspire the next generation of architects and technology leaders and writers and illustrators and film directors, then I feel like I have fulfilled my life purpose.
For some reason as a kid being a smart athlete didn't seem like the right thing, because you didn't fit in. You didn't want to be too smart because you'd be a nerd. But then you didn't want to be too dumb either because then you didn't get the grades you needed to play.
I'm trying to build a Disney. Not only as a creator, but also be able to create universes where then that content can go into toys, and live on multimedia platforms, whether it's apps, books, movies, cartoons. It's like building a whole world, which takes a lot of money.
When my daughter was born, I was reading a lot of children's books, and there weren't any characters who looked like her. For all the content that's out there, there aren't many African-American protagonists. I looked at it like, if there isn't someone else creating it then I have to do it myself.
There's a lot of guys who use their likeness - to do movies, and do other business stuff, but not too many guys are actually making product. I'm making product, it's a different thing. A lot of guys are holding up Coke cans and get paid a lot of money to do that, but no one's making a Coke can. I'm the guy that's trying to make the Coke can.