When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.

You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.

I think you realize how much you need to have people that you love. It's not as much about them loving you - it's about you needing to love people.

I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

The best advice about getting older? Just be thankful you're not dead!

I wasn't a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, "Oh, I have this comic book here." It wasn't like I was collecting them.

There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling.

I might have had too many friends in my twenties. I probably said yes too much, and then I had to learn how to say no. How to get away in order to work on stuff.

I just think people have been very gracious and welcoming me on set, and even off set.

Guys are natural problem solvers - they like to have strategies.

A step towards love is a mile towards joy.

There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

When we are not sure we are alive.

What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

I have more self-confidence than I did when I was in my 20s.

Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.

It may all end tomorrow, or it could go on forever (in which case I'm doomed).