Will

by Will Smith

Some of the most impactful lessons I’ve ever received, I’ve had to learn in spite of myself. I resisted them, I denied them, but ultimately the weight of their truth became unavoidable.

job felt impossible. Never-ending. But when I focused on one brick, everything got easy—I knew I could lay one damn brick

smaller. I started to see that the difference between a task that feels impossible and a task that feels doable is merely a matter of perspective.

Mom-Mom would often say that knowledge was the only thing that the world couldn’t take away from you.

My father tormented me. And he was also one of the greatest men I’ve ever known.

He once yelled at my father, “You can hit me, but you can’t make me cry. [Smack.] I’m not crying! [Smack.] I’m not crying.”

How we decide to respond to our fears, that is the person we become. I decided to be funny.

in that moment, I decided. I made a silent promise. To my mother, to my family, to myself: One day, I would be in charge. And this would never, ever happen again.

My first impulse is always to clean up the truth in my mind. To make it better. To shine it up a little bit so it doesn’t hurt as much.

“Never argue with a fool, because from a distance, people can’t tell who’s who.”

When you are unaware that you shouldn’t be able to do something, then you just do it.

It wasn’t just the racism that bothered me, it was the stupidity. People would tell me how I was supposed to be, and it just didn’t make any sense.

I had never dunked before, but as soon as I said it, I believed it.

The bigger the fantasy you live, the more painful the inevitable collision with reality.

We all delude ourselves a little bit around the things that scare us.

We concoct entire narratives about other people’s lives when in fact we have no clue what they’re thinking or feeling or struggling

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I ’wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

My father was one side of the triangle: discipline. He taught me how to work, how to be relentless. He instilled in me an ethic that “It’s better to die than to quit.”

Paul’s martial arts training allowed him to submit to Daddio’s authority. He respected him, but he was not afraid of him, because deep down inside, Paul knew that if he needed to, he could kill him.

Hip-hop was not just our music—it was dance; it was fashion, street art, politics, social justice. It was everything; it was life; it was us.

We simply loved what we were doing, so we kept doing it.

Words can affect how people view themselves, how they treat each other, how they navigate the world. Words can build people up, or they can tear them down.

We all want to feel good about ourselves, but many of us don’t recognize how much work that actually takes.

I never wanted to leave. We were seeking our sound, but we found ourselves.

1986 World Supreme DJ was a kid who spent most of his life in a basement in Southwest Philly: my DJ, DJ Jazzy Jeff.

“Look at the five people you spend the most time with because that’s who you are.”

Hope sustains life. Hope is the elixir of survival during our darkest times.

is one person’s limited perspective of the infinite possibilities before you. People’s advice is based on their fears, their experiences, their prejudices, and at the end of the day, their advice is just that: it’s theirs, not yours. When people give you advice, they’re basing it on what they would do, what they can perceive, on what they think you can do.

you are the first time you’ve ever happened. YOU and NOW are a unique occurrence, of which you are the most reliable measure of all the possibilities.

I totally froze. My mouth was hanging open, for some reason my heart was pounding. I wanted to scream, I wanted to jump, but at the same time I didn’t want to do anything to bump into the universe and knock my record off the radio.

The joy of being right about me.

Life is learning. Period. Overcoming ignorance is the whole point of the journey.

or they’re trapped by some hidden, self-defeating narrative,

miraculous happened: The entire crowd began to sing the lyrics back to me. Every person knew every word. I held the mic out to the crowd, and they finished the song. It took everything I had not to burst into tears. Thousands of people saying my words back to me. I felt loved, protected, and cradled by a crowd of strangers.

It’s respectable to lose to the universe. It’s a tragedy to lose to yourself.

This was an idea that Quincy understood fully. Magic demands awareness (faith—you have to believe in magic); preparation (move the rock—we must identify and eradicate the poisonous resistances and impediments within ourselves); then, surrender (stay out of the way and trust the magic to do what it does).

The universe wants you to have the miracle! Move the damn rock!

“NO PARALYSIS THROUGH ANALYSIS!”

The Alchemist, a novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, was my first literary love affair.

I get into “one little fight” with, the guy who is spinning me around and precipitating my departure for California? That’s Charlie Mack.)

Change can be scary, but it’s utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here.

“OK. What’s it say on the cover?” “Uhhmm,” I said, confused, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?” “Right. And who’s the Fresh Prince?” Quincy barked. “Me,” I said. “EXACTLY! Don’t nobody know what the fuck you’re supposed to say better than you. If they could do what you do, they wouldn’t have hired you. You say what you wanna say, the way you wanna say it. And when somebody has a problem with it, tell ’em to call me.”

It’s amazing how skewed your vision can become when you see the present through the lens of your past.

If quitting is an option, you’ll never finish anything hard.

Jason’s Lyric was Jada’s current movie. The film is a beautiful love story between Lyric, played by Jada, and Jason, played by Allen Payne. At sixty-three minutes into Jason’s Lyric, Jada has a graphic love scene that has become one of the most iconic love scenes in African American cinema. So when Jada said she was leaving her house in fifteen minutes, to

“Well, that’s a buncha bullshit! You the luckiest muthafucka I ever met in my life.”

In Berlin, Tom literally signed every single autograph until there was no one else who wanted one. Tom Cruise’s global promotions were the individual best in Hollywood.

We had found the formula. Independence Day had special effects, creatures, and a love story, and when we added our global promotional sledgehammer, two words: Scorched. Earth.

Jaden Christopher Syre Smith was born on July 8, 1998, pretty much nine months to the day. . . . In our family, we affectionately refer to his conception as “the Miracle.”

You gotta know that that person is a survivor.”