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.

Time management is a big part of the director's job.

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

There are so many famous people now that are not really gifted or talented at doing anything other than getting made up, putting on tight dresses, acting badly, getting married. I mean, what the hell? I don't know where we are going with this here in America. And we are setting a tone for the world, because everyone looks at what we do.

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.

Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.

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.