He revolutionized music videos. Before Michael Jackson, MTV refused to play African-American artists.

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.

I have got the Arctic lure and will certainly go North again.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single "I" or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.

The thing about being on a long-running series is that you get to know all the stunt men and the stunt coordinators, and they let you pretty much do everything you want, as long as they trust you.

We are not going into government with Sinn Fein.

I don't care if my lettuce has DDT on it, just as long as it's crisp.

In the state of Michigan, where I served in the state Legislature, there was a lot of shuffling of money between one year and the other to balance the budget.

I think the first villain that I ever played was on Stargate. I was this superior being that would take over a human host and believe that he was the most superior being in the universe.

Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul.