If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
When I was saying, 'White people go to hell,' I never had trouble finding a publisher. But when I say, 'Black and white unite and fight, destroy capitalism,' then you suddenly become unreasonable.
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.
I was always a class clown, so I never had trouble fitting in; I just had trouble finding out where I really wanted to be.
Better never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you; for you only make your trouble double trouble when you do.
People thought I was trying to say that women had no say, no rights. I was not saying that. I was saying that women had a role, a duty. When they want to have a say in government - though in Africa they are not expected to do that - they are not discouraged. They can do what they want to do.
I've learned to be more reserved, watch what I'm saying; I got in a little bit of trouble. People tell me 'Never lose that, never lose that,' but then I get in trouble so I have to lose it. I'm trying to keep a little bit; I'm never going to lose who I am, I just gotta tone it down a little bit.
My religious upbringing was comically strict — even the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner was banned. In our house, no one was allowed to refer to deviled eggs. We had to call them angelic eggs. We were never allowed to swear. I'd get into trouble just for saying 'Hell no'. If you dropped a hammer on your toe in our house you had to say something like 'Jiminy Christmas'. The only music we were allowed to listen to was gospel. No wonder I rebelled.
I've become Olympic champion six times and I've never taken a performance-enhancing drug in my life, but I was lucky in that I never even had the choice. I never had pressure and I never had a person come to me saying, 'You should do this.'
The purpose of faith isn't always to keep us from having trouble. It is often to carry us through trouble. If we never had any trouble, we wouldn't need any faith.
I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.
Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.
English is my first language, but when I started shooting for 'Definition of Fear,' I actually had trouble with my lines! It was so weird, because I never have trouble with my lines in Hindi!
Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. I'll not willingly offend, nor be easily offended.
The trouble is, most people are not so generous. Everybody wants love for themselves. I hear this all the time from the women I work with. I hear them say, "I want, I want." I never hear them saying what they want to give.
If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.