Critics like to build you up, tear you down, and then, if you're lucky, build you up again.

I think black people have to be in control of their own image because film is a powerful medium. We can't just sit back and let other people define our existence.

There's an unwritten law that you cannot have a Jewish character in a film who isn't 100 percent perfect, or you're labeled anti-Semitic.

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten.

It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.

Don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. I am still here, like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest.

When you love something it's not a job anymore.

All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.

American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.

I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

When we come face-to-face with our fears we are really confronting ourselves.

Humility is the most undervalued godly virtue.

Never sit under a tree waiting for the apple to fall. Climb the tree, grab that apple!When it comes, never be inert and take your time, TIME TO MOVE!

In acting class, I used to hide in the corner and pray the teacher wouldn't call on me.

You should always speak your mind, and be bold, and be obnoxious, and do whatever you want and don’t let anybody tell you to stop it.

I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty.

There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.

The good Lord made this world and everything that's in it. The way I see it, baby, you got to love it to the limit.

I'm embarrassed if I think anyone knows exactly what I paid for something, or even where I got it. I want what I'm wearing to feel good on, wear well, and to be extremely functional.