Long

From now on, you will be your own teacher, your own guide, your own critic. From now on, you fill out your own report card. Be an easy grader. Score yourself on a curve.

When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense. You aren't just following dreams, you're reaching for your destiny.

I think on some level, role models are overrated. Had I required that another black man from the Bronx had become an astrophysicist for me to become one, I'd still be in the Bronx.

Helping others ends up helping you more than anyone. Getting out of your own concerns and caring about someone else's life for a while reminds you that you are not the center of the universe.

Make it about the power of we! Because, if you do, you'll have a lot more than 'things worth having' — you'll have 'a life worth living.' And you can write that one down in pen.

The road to success is a long, winding road that is littered with wreckages of promising careers that crashed and burned. It's not a pretty thing to see talent wasted, it's even sadder to waste it yourself.

Take a minute and just enjoy life. Sniff those roses, you guys. Sniff deep. Don't just rush into life's next chapter. You just climbed a mountain — twelve years of nose to the grindstone.

Don't go to college. It's super expensive and super hard. Seriously, don't waste your time and money unless you want to be a doctor, then I totally get it. No one's going to let you take out their spleen unless you have a degree. The rest of you, go read some books.

You can't control how smart you are, how funny you are, how good-looking you are. The one thing you can control in your life is how hard you work.

The one way to guarantee you're not going to be successful at something is to give up on it. Really ambitious goals — starting a theater company, running for Congress, opening an art gallery in Prague. These things are hard. But even the hardest goal is not that hard.

Dare to say out loud the thing that you actually want and the hard part is actually over. Because then you'll start to make a plan, and when you have a plan, then you'll start to make that plan real.

How many times do we label someone with our first impressions only to be proven wrong? The tattooed motorcycle guy who turns out to be a teddy bear, the buttoned-up co-worker who actually knows how to party.