I believe in destiny. But I also believe that you can’t just sit back and let destiny happen. A lot of times, an opportunity might fall into your lap, but you have to be ready for that opportunity. You can’t sit there waiting on it. A lot of times you are going to have to get out there and make it happen.
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.
Power is knowing your past.
I don't think my films are going to get rid of racism or prejudice. I think the best thing my films can do is provoke discussion.
I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.
When you love something it's not a job anymore.
I ain't Martin Luther King. I don't need a dream. I have a plan.
I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten.
You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class. I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.
It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.
I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do.
It has been my observation that parents kill more dreams than anybody.
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.
It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion. I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do.
As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.
What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real.
Those that'll tell don't know, and those that know won't tell.
Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing... then it will be done, but not until then.
We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.
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.
American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.
People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.
