I'm always more comfortable and in a good place when I'm with friends because I know they trust me. I'm able to get great performances from people who trust me.

Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.

I've dodged all sorts of bullets in Hollywood to get my movies made. I'm tough.

I can't do movies where you start thinking "Where's the commercial appeal? How are we going to market this?" It's not that kind of party.

I was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn't like the one, two, three - boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene.

I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

I want to go to places that are unexpected of me, because people really think they have me pegged. I want to do something different, like maybe do a space movie or a musical.

Trust is hard to get from actors, and for me to give to actors.

I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.

I'm not tough when it comes to people criticizing the people that I protect, and those are the actors. It makes them scared to do it again for another director.

My philosophy has always been, you don't put your name in front of a movie.

When all seems to be against you, remember, a ship sometimes has to sail against the current, not with it.

Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.

At the most subtle level, your inner intelligence is steadily progressing along the corridors of eternity.

Who seeketh two strings to one bow, they may shoot strong, but never straight.

Of my four marriages, the one to Bob Levitt is the only one I don't regret

My sentence is for open war.

Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song.

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

I often love to hate Aishwarya

Money always has come to me, because I always have seen myself as endlessly abundant.