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.

Raising the standard of the work, not complaining about somebody not voting.

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.

Acting, it's not my life, my children and my family, that's life. I'll get up every morning, God willing, for that.

You don't pick black actors or black directors because they are black. You pick them because they are good. If you lend somebody 50 million dollars you want you're money back. You don't care if they are oppressed. You just want you're money back.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don't need another plaque.

I wasn't allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.