Everybody does what they want to do for their own specific reasons.

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.

Many of us have no appetite for spiritual things because we are absorbed in the sinful pleasures of this world. We have been eating too many of the devil’s delicacies.

The sun's down and the moon's pretty - it's time to ramble.

He solved at a stroke the great question of the direction of nerve-currents in their travel through brain and spinal cord.

My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized.

When my legs hurt, I say: “Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do!

Toronto's one of my favourite places. If I were to move anywhere out of California, it would be Toronto. Definitely.

The system wants you to be either a bow or an arrow; refuse both, because there is a third choice: To be an archer!

The sight of the bare katana inspires everyone to a practically Nipponese level of politeness

It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.

What do you get the man who has everything? Might I suggest a gravestone inscribed with the words: so what?