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

You know, "Moonlight" deserves best picture [on Oscar]. What I mean by tarnished is the moment - being able to be in front of all your peers and being able to thank everyone involved and particularly when it's a movie that has some pivotal social relevance, like "Moonlight," particularly in a time where, with this new transitional government, LGBT rights are just being stripped. This win means something.

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'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.

Harlem is filled with moments of history.

The one thing you'll notice when you're walking through Harlem is every single passing car is playing different music and there's also music that's being played out of windows.

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.