Quotes About Community

With 'Urban Secrets,' I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.

If people want to find me, they can. They'll see a middle-aged woman wandering around the grocery store, looking to see what to buy for dinner.

Your roots, your family, your friends all become so much more important to you as you get older, especially if you are a wandering minstrel like me.

Browsing for books with a mouse and screen is not nearly as joyful an act as wandering the stacks and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of knowledge. The best libraries are places of imagination, education and community. The best libraries have mystery to them.

I spend a lot of time wandering around the countryside just looking at people, seeing how everything fits together.

'The Waltons' was profoundly important after years of wandering around. I was 44 and cut off from family and friends. It nurtured me back to a sense of family and who I am. It was a transforming experience.

The Jewish story is the story of wandering. It is the story of extraordinary heterogeneous complication.

Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out. They don't want to and they don't have the means to sustain it. That's where my heart is and that's what I think about all the time.

I'm happy that as many people who wanna listen to us can listen to us.

I don't live in L.A. on purpose because I don't wanna be immersed in that. I have to have a real life, with real people, in order to inform what I'm doing; otherwise, it just becomes the snake eating its own tail. Vampirism.

Everybody the same: We all got problems. We all want to be loved. We all wanna be happy.

South Central is just who I am. Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out.

'World Is Our Playground' is a big room banger that makes you wanna check into a hostel and call Mike Taylor.

When people say, 'Hey, wanna come to our house for dinner?' I say, 'Yeah, what should I bring?' They say, 'How about the dessert?' I just don't skimp on the dessert. I make it the yummy way it should be made, and then I just don't eat the whole pan.

I wasn't a bad kid. I was a good kid. But I had gotten in a lot of fights 'cause in the neighborhood I grew up in, that wasn't equated with bad behavior almost. I mean, we'd fought like it was another game. 'You wanna play stick ball today?' 'Nah, let's go fight.'

I do things - whether it's donations or events for good causes or giving back to my community - for the right reason: because I want to. Because it's the best thing to do. I wanna help someone else out. As far as all the attention for it, that's cool if I get it, but I'm not doing it for that reason. Stuff like that doesn't really phase me.

I think I was 10 when I did my first community play, and then I started booking bigger roles in these plays, and people were telling me and my parents that I was talented. And I was like, 'Well, this is something I wanna do.'

We like where we live and we wanna participate in our neighbourhoods and communities and stuff and try to- we're not like benevolent- it's pretty basic.

It makes sense - you wanna gather a lot of people together, and Vegas really does that well. New York can, but you know the hassles. I've lived there. It's an entirely different beast.

'Saw' is a particularly popular film with 14-30 year olds, so I'll be at a playground and meet six or 10 skateboarders who just wanna talk about 'Saw.'

I really wanna do a Spanish album. I have that Latin culture background. It's a part of me. I'm not the best Spanish speaker, but I have a longing to connect with that. I just think how supportive the Latin community has been, even during 'Idol.' I'd like to give back with something like that.

I have a lot of celebrity friends. But they're all Hollywood friends. You can't call them if you fall over and break your leg, but if you're having a BBQ and wanna chitchat, you hang out with them, or you go to their house.

I'm from a neighborhood that isn't amazing - it's not the worst, either - and I was happy. But Atlanta is just one area of a country. There's a world out there I wanna touch.

I have some friends, and they're super-hipster. And they're like, 'All I wanna do is sing in a jazz bar and to just make it to pay for the rent.' And I'm like, 'Cool... That's not what I wanna do. I want as many people as possible to go to my concert.'