If you have a talented family, you should be shot if you don't use them.

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.

Writing things was important, wasn't it? Nakata asked.'Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

Never quit on your dream, but learn to cut your losses and quit your plan if it is not working.

Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.

It is the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively.

I do believe that people go to the movies - for one reason or another - they go to the movies to have an experience.

I don't paint like a woman is supposed to paint. Thank God, art doesn't bother about things like that.

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.

Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion.

I wanted this to be a movie on TV so I could press the off button and make it all go away.

During my time we had two chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, at different times of course, on the bridge, both of whom asked my permission to sit on the captain's chair.