If you just change one person's life, you feel like you've done something. But if you can change a whole lot of them and get them looking at themselves differently, it's amazing.

I've had a lot of experience auditioning people, and I can do it rather quickly even though sometimes I let them linger and give them time, but I kind of know after I see them do a couple of steps. I know.

My mother Vivian Ayers always instilled within her children that our opinions, our thoughts and our ideas about what was possible was important. My mother made me feel that I was important as a thinker at four-years-old. And I instill that within my students everyday.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

The first thing that goes into shooting a scene is understanding whats on the page.

In places in the world where we don't speak the same language, or even understand that we pray to the same God, we dance to the same beat, that is the ONE.

Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block.