I never thought about being an actor. I was just going to play music and baseball. That’s all I was going to do. To this day, that’s what I do. I just added movies to it.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row

Popular literature and culture used to reflect people's aspirations, pain, and passion. All those particular things are no longer available to us.

Some of the most amazing stories are happening on the global scene. My extraordinary producing partner, Joslyn Barnes, she's just virtually changed my life with the way she constructed this company and how we go about telling the stories we want to tell.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.

When someone you know passes on, the only thing you can do is keep moving forward.