I'm a positive person, so I don't get bogged down with it. If you're expecting that, if you wall in that, if you practice that, then you'll attract what you fear.

The Bible says "faith without works is nothing" so destiny is great, fate is great, faith is great - but you still have to work at it. I don't just sit at home and wait for it all to unfold.

After directing the first film it feels kind of tricky being back to being in front of the camera, because I've always got one eye over there, kind of thinking of what they are doing, and how the shot is being composed. I think it takes a couple of films to just get back to just being an actor.

My father was a minister for 50 years with Pentecostal Church of God in Christ. We prayed about everything, every day, then he always said, "Amen. God is love." I thought God is love was one word. Like "Godislove." And it took me a long time to learn what that really meant.

People tend to relax when they're off camera. That's when they should be working the hardest.

The only reason I'm acting in films I direct is to get the money to make them, quite frankly, it's not what I'm interested in doing.

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.