I'm always moving forward.

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

I think a good director casts a film so that the actors bring a lot to the table.

Never regret losing time on reading good books

Let us draw from the crib the joy and deep peace that Jesus comes to bring to the world.

Read and write all the time. Never stop sending out your stuff. If you're constantly writing and sending stuff out, eventually someone will bite.

Sometimes I worry that belief and hope are the same thing, and that truth is something else entirely.

My first generation of young readers now have not only children, but some of them have grandchildren to whom they're introducing their old passion.

Models are like athletes: You burn hard and fast.

Talking to oneself, I have often thought, is the best way to be sure of intelligent and witty conversation.

Reading for writers is like training for athletes.

We can do anything we want. The next time you hear yourself saying, to another-and especially yourself-I Can't, take a deep breath and say instead, My resources are otherwise engaged.

Money, it has been said, is the cause of good things to a good man, of evil things to a bad man.