Why would anything change that has not been changed since the existence of cinema? [James] Baldwin somehow wakes you up to reality. It takes you out of the dream - or out of the nightmare.

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

Just try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined.

The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history.

There are only one or two geniuses every century.

You need to react. That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

[James] Baldwin is needed even more today because he helps you focus to the essential, to what is important.

[James] Baldwin "was one of greatest intellectuals of his time. He was an important voice, period, not an important black voice."

Today, I don't even think that people like [James Baldwin] are possible. He would not have that much room.

Your tweet is as important as if you would have written a Ph.D. [dissertation] on the subject.

For myself I think that one wrong does not right the other, and forgiveness cannot be won with useless tears or alms to the Church.

Death should take more care with his paperwork.

All your beliefs, they're just that. They're nothing. They're how you were taught and raised. That doesn't make 'em real.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

I lead verbally, not by example.

I used to play cello. My mother kept me out of school a whole year to study music and counterpoint. She thought I had ability, but I was absolutely without talent.

Sidharth and me were supposed to work much before Bang Bang, we were in talks for a few films which didnt work out.

I spent seven months in Africa and came back saying there isn't anything you can say about black people that you couldn't say about, say, pink people except that they're black.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Seeing into one's self-nature is seeing into nothingness. Seeing into nothingness is true seeing & eternal seeing