• Rap music--which a lot of white America doesn't understand--rap music is not just a music. Rap music is a subculture: hip-hop. It's a style of dress, an attitude, a look, a language. It's more than just music. 

• (On learning to swim) I'm too big to have some woman hold my stomach and say 'Now kick your feet'.

• I didn't kill nobody in none of my records, I didn't use no profanity in none of my records...gangsta rap is wack.

• I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

• If it was something that I really committed myself to, I don't think there's anything that could stop me becoming President of the United States.

• I don't know what my calling is, but I want to be here for a bigger reason. I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived.

• Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.

• In my mind, I've always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y'all just didn't know yet.

• The first eight years of schooling was with all white people. So that helped me to understand how white people think. I think that transition is what helped me bridge the gap, because that's what my success has really been about: bridging the gap between the black community and the white community.

• There's so much negative imagery of black fatherhood. I've got tons of friends that are doing the right thing by their kids, and doing the right thing as a father - and how come that's not as newsworthy?

• (looking back, he's amazed to have become a star earning millions of dollars per film) It has been beyond anything I've ever dreamed. I just put my head down and run hard and I'm always surprised when I look up and see where I am.

• Comedy is better than muscles, better than money, better than looks. It's like if you can make a girl laugh out loud, you're in. It almost like the pressure of the laugh makes her underwear fall off.

• (on wife Jada) We were together for two years before she even laughed at something I said! She thinks I'm hilarious now, it just took her some time to work into it, but we connected intellectually. Our conversations were always very serious, about the world and how we can make it better. We connected intellectually and worked into the comedic side.

• (on the birth of Jaden) Me and Jada wanna take credit for it, but we went to Mexico and got some tequila and nine months later he showed up.

• If I weren't a musician/actor, I'd be a computer engineer. I was always good at math. I probably would have been the guy who invented the remote control if I'd been around then.

• (On Star Wars) I might have been eight or nine. That was the movie that put me into a space where the science fiction element was almost a spiritual connection for me. I thought, if someone could imagine that and then put it on a screen and make me feel like that... and my entire career I've been trying to make people feel like Star Wars made me feel.

• I know how to learn anything I want to learn. Give me a book.