Power is knowing your past.

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.

HopeSmiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...

One of the hardest things for a writer to do is delete words.

We have proclaimed to the world our determination 'to die freemen, rather than to live slaves.' We have appealed to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and in Heaven we have placed our trust.

I am glad I met you and I am glad to say that.

I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse.

Life is good, but Wine is better.

Britain needs a simpler tax system which is simple to understand, where there are no loop-holes, where the very rich do not avoid tax by employing expensive accountants

I'm constantly trying to be as original as I can.

My motto is 'Love and let love' - with the one stipulation that people who love in glass-houses should breathe on the windows.

Infinite perfection is in every man, though unmanifested.