I don't look back, no. Maybe when I'm older; people say, 'What's your favorite film?' I say, 'My next one.' I'm not interested in sitting around; I just don't, never have.

[Having monologue] are talking to somebody even if it's just to yourself, convince yourself if that's what you're trying to do.

So you never know who you touch. You never know how or when you'll have an impact, or how important your example can be to someone else" (20).

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

What we did [shooting "Fences"] was we got young students from Carnegie Mellon, the acting and theater students, and we had them as our understudies. I told them, "You have to be off book and be ready. If Viola [Davis] has to leave you have to jump in."

Denzel Washington: I like the collaboration, I like seeing people do well, so I really plan to direct the rest of my days.

I try to encourage actors to work harder off screen because that's where you find things.