I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated.

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.

She continued weeping until the heat of her tear water, the sheer velocity of its flow, finally obscured the already vague circumstances of its origins.

You know, Jacob, if it weren’t for the fact that we’re natural enemies and that you’re also trying to steal away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you.

but her mind feels feverish as it races through the crowded hallways of the past

If the poets offered us nothing more than another make-believe world, they would be mere sellers of drugs or, at best, sweetmeats.

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief.

Anything added can be subtracted

What kind of wonderful God is this who reaches down into the lives of people, picks them up, grants them faith, and changes them!

If the deal isn't good for the other party, it isn't good for you.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

If you come from insignificance and when you die you return to insignificance, then nothing is significant now.