I wake up every day and think everything sure is awful, but then I ask the Lord what I can do to make it better.
Afeni Shakur
The worst thing that can happen to you is if you don't take responsibility for what you did wrong.
In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.
I have no secrets. Neither did Tupac, neither does my daughter. We don't live behind secrets, we don't live lies, we are who we are, and we are pretty happy to be who we are.
I believe it is our responsibility to make sure that Tupac's entire body of work is made available for his fans.
Trust me, you can't change anything without causing some degree of disruption. It's impossible, that is exactly what change is. Some people are uncomfortable with the disruption that change causes, but the disruption is necessary if anything is going to change.
Arts can save children, no matter what's going on in their homes.
That's what art is for me. It helps you maintain hope by giving you the ability to either create outside your reality, or to describe your reality.
Everything Tupac said was introspective. He was really honest with himself about himself. He knew his flaws, but he also had such love for his work and his people.
We must recognize that anger only agitates and incites. It cannot squelch or satisfy the hunger for justice.
That's what people are who have that impact on us. They are ahead of their time. They can't help it. They get put into a small, frail body, and they are given a light that is much too bright for that cavity.
I spent 43 years of my life in anger and I know what it can do... Now I pray a lot. I do whatever I need to do to keep me out of that anger, out of that place where I can't grow and be better.
When Tupac turned thirteen, we were homeless on that day. His theater club gave him a party. Sometimes I do wonder that if I hadn't gone on with fool-heartedness, my son would have had an easier transition into this life. But at least I was able to keep art there. Otherwise he would've had no way to get his feelings out.
Please remember that my great grandmother was a slave. My grandmother was a sharecropper. My mother was a factory worker.
Nelson Mandela's contribution to the people of South Africa has been immeasurable and I look forward to helping with his work all over the country.
I live with truth.
That's just the way life is. We have to be willing to pay the price. You have to be willing to pay the price for what's right - and for what we do wrong. That's one of the things that I love about my son. My son was always willing to take his weight.
When I carried Tupac, when I was five months pregnant they put me back in jail, my bail was revoked. When my bail was revoked, I was not allowed to have my own food. I could only have what was there.
Pac was special. He was articulate. I trained him. Punishment for him was reading The New York Times.
The Woodruff Library Archives has done a phenomenal job archiving my son's materials.
We cannot go anywhere with anger that we haven't already been.
I know that my son was an honest person and an honest artist, and what he gave from himself through his art was the depth of his humanity.
I think people have gotten to know Tupac much better since he's been gone than they did when he was here.
Black history won't stop no bullets.
I never wanted to he just a housewife. I was too restless.
I wasn't available to do the right things for my son. If not for the arts, my child would've been lost.
All we ever wanted was for Tupac to have the opportunity to tell his story.
Whatever else anyone says he was, he may have been. But Tupac really was a great American artist. The passage of time allows us to see things as they really are: We see the poetry; we see the personality; we see different sides.
That's what Tupac and I got from my dad - the rebellion and the need to fight back and be recognized for being different.
Tupac loved to read! Books were a constant part of his life.
People can like him or not like him individually. But I need for them to know that he was a person of substance, and he was worthy, and he was a good son and a good brother and a good participant in the community.
I just need to do Pac's work. I just need to. Maybe because I'm a recovering addict, I'm obsessed like that.
Even after his death, Tupac is as powerful as he was when he was living.
I think that Tupac was the trendsetter, the high mark. What we hope his music will continue to do is to at least encourage people away from mediocrity, because he was not a mediocre artist. When he was alive, people competed. There was a lot of competition, and a lot of the artists were better for it.
I learned that I can't save the world, but I can help a child at a time.
I miss my son every day a little bit more, but I thank God every day for every second that he was here.
First of all, a lot of people, a lot of women and men, have lost their children. I'm not the only one. But I happen to be blessed that my son gave me all these things to work with so that I get to work out my grief in a way that other people are not able to. So I can't possibly be downtrodden about that.
I'm grateful my son was - as any mother would say, I had a very good son.
I think what it was is that Tupac was extremely passionate, very honest and raw in his approach to communicating. He understood communicating. And I think he just did it from a deep place within.
For me, revolution is around young people with no skills, college education, and coming from everywhere having an economic impact on an entire system which no one notices.
I have never one day been ashamed of my son. Even when he was not right, that's ok.
Revolution is Tupac showing a young artist that he can scribble in a notebook and it's worth a lot.
I might be the only one who's never taken a dime from my son.
Anger is an all-consuming fire that will burn you and everyone else around you. Where is the justice in that?
I'm not a filmmaker. I'm not a music producer by choice.
I read every agreement of every contract. Anything I put my signature on, I really do read them. And I find things.
I have respect for my son because he had sense enough to take responsibility for his own actions.
The critics never ever one time fairly criticized my son.
We need to read history from the source.
