Don't take no as a full stop, treat it like a comma.

The key quality all successful people share is the ability to inspire, to transfer our passion to other people and to bring them along with us in pursuit of our vision. I have to be able to inspire investors, actors and crews on a daily basis. What I recognize in other successful people is a similar ability to make their passion infectious.

As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.

If you unite a couple on a joint fight, the question is, "Does it unite them literally, or does it weaken their love?" And if it weakens their love, is that true love? And if this is true love, then you know they should be united by their separation. It's their fight that brings them emotionally together while they're physically separated, and so, though there's physical separation, there is mental and emotional closeness.

Don't let a culture or society's rules define who you are; you define who you are.

What I wanted to do was put a woman of color, front and center, in my movie combining a lot of themes that were relevant to both men and women. I actively wanted her to carry the weight of this movie because I'm a woman. And I actively wanted to explore many of the issues that affected her as a woman of color. That was very important to me. And although these issues affect some women of color, I don't think they're only of interest to women of color. They're of universal interest.

The reality is that we’re in very politicized times. The complete antithesis of Obama is Trump. We are in very polarized times. People are taking a very strong view after a period of time, I think, where people fell asleep on politics to a certain extent.