My mom raised me to never have anything control me.

Making people laugh is giving, and it's healing, too, when people can go up to the movies and forget about their problems. It's a good thing. That's why I want to work.

It was like a family reunion, watching the movie. It's always a good feeling when I can get a screening for my family.

I think real life reflects your movies. In your life, you pick stuff that influences what movie roles you wanna pick. I think if you've got an interesting life, you wanna do interesting movies about interesting things.

Everybody goes through a lot of the same things, and I talk about those, and that's the key. You have to connect with your audience, and I might take them on a trip with me, tell them I went here and I went there and they'll go with me, you know, to hear the stories.

I wanted to cut down on the profanity, because I think I'm funnier without sayin' a lot of cuss words.

When you're first starting out, you want to keep making good movies. When you're young and you're black, you do a bad movie and you're through.