I worked with Sidney Lumet years ago, and we had a long rehearsal process, and he would tape out the entire set on the stage, so I stole that from him.

I've always seen it to be a privilege to make movies. It's a really expensive, creative medium.

[Saniyya Sidney] was very serious about her work and her craft, and she wanted to be good, and she wanted to work on it. So I said, "Ok." It was as simple as that. She was just right. She just has it.

A sociopath will do anything to win. Anything.

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic make-up, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

I talked to my mother about it a lot. I asked her what it was like to grow up in New York and Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and I asked her about a woman leaving her husband. I asked her about how she would feel about that woman, and my mother grew up in the Church Of God In Christ, and she told me that the woman might be isolated because the other women thought she might go and come after their husbands. That's how they thought then.