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.

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 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.

I think that when you have audacity, you will get polarization.

I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

Most of human history had been industry versus nature, with industry winning.

Having the positive belief that it will all be O.K. just means that you hustle and make it work because failure is not even an option in your own mind.

It is your duty to be exceedingly kind to every human being...until ye change the world of man into the world of God.

By the time I was 7 or 8, I wanted to be a comedy writer.

One of my earliest memories as a reader - I don't know how old I was, quite young - was a poem of his, called "Fog," and I remember the first verse, "The fog comes / on little cat feet".

When I looked into the mechanics of being a businessman, I found it wasn't rocket science.

Civilization is the art of creating useless needs.

Very little about being a writer is signing an autograph. It's sitting in a room and writing. Getting it out.

Some people choose not to engage the battle and then don't seek out that kind of success. And others do.