I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

Failure: Is it a limitation? Bad timing? It's a lot of things. It's something you can't be afraid of, because you'll stop growing. The next step beyond failure could be your biggest success in life.

In places in the world where we don't speak the same language, or even understand that we pray to the same God, we dance to the same beat, that is the ONE.

But out of limitations comes creativity.

Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block.

I'm driven by passion. I mean, I am tired right now. I work to a point of abandon. I am fueled by my understanding of the need for self-expression that exists for young people.

Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

If you just change one person's life, you feel like you've done something. But if you can change a whole lot of them and get them looking at themselves differently, it's amazing.

I'm always moving forward.

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

You become what you believe, decide, and act upon.

We need a politician who hates politics.

If you want total security go to prison. There you're fed clothed given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking ... is freedom.

Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality

Everybody dies but not everybody lives.

DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

You create your own decoration. You choose your color, you choose your mood. ... If you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy.

The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

Killing ain't fair, but somebody gotta do it.