Harlem is filled with moments of history.

That's one thing that you notice in New York that you don't notice in LA is how much music is all over the place.

One picture and one win cannot right a million wrongs. It's a step in the right direction.We have to get to a point where a movie like "Moonlight" winning [Oscar] or Barry Jenkins being nominated and winning, you know, for a screenplay or being nominated for best director - that it's just commonplace. They shouldn't be a novelty.

I was just really happy to see Barry [Jenkins] and Mahershala [Ali] and everyone else involved with "Moonlight" get their moment.

One's ability to communicate a story visually, honestly, is a bridge of communication that transcends language because the true mark of a good film is that you can turn the sound off and watch it and have some understanding of what you're seeing.

If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.

The Academy Awards for people in Hollywood is like the Super Bowl, the presidential inauguration and winning the NBA championship rolled up into one.