Courage

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.

Your inexperience is an asset and will allow you to think in original, unconventional ways. Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset.

If I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk. And the risk led to one of my greatest personal and professional achievements.

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.

I implore you to never back away from fear, but instead, dive into it. I'm talking about the kind of inhibiting fear that erupts out of the idea of failure, or the possibility of making mistakes, and that nagging belief that you're actually a fraud and not good enough.

It doesn't matter how slow you go, so long as you don't stop. My point is: be fair to yourselves with regards to how you view your achievements. And don't be afraid to try things outside your comfort zone.

Please do not twist yourselves into shapes to please. Don't do it. If someone likes that version of you, that version of you that is false and holds back, then they actually just like that twisted shape, and not you.

I speak because I think our time on earth is short and each moment that we are not our truest selves, each moment we pretend to be what we are not, each moment we say what we do not mean because we imagine that is what somebody wants us to say, then we are wasting our time on earth.

We cannot always bend the world into the shapes we want, but we can try. We can make a concerted and real and true effort. Always just try, because you never know.

You don't get redrawn in this life. You summon the hero, each day. On your best day.

As you get older, you realize that no one has all the answers. It turns out that life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty.