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

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.

Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you.

Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.

Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not.

I do benefits for all religions. ... I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.

I'd never do a film that would hurt anyone's sentiments, be it Indian or not.

You know what they say about bein' nice to the right people on the way up Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin' down

Children live what they learn.

Im attracted to the things that people throw away - the shadow goods, in Jungian terms.

My God is a God who wants me to have things. He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block.

Integrity is the courage and self-discipline to cooperate and initiate according to the Divine, which you know in your heart as Truth.