Hate, hatred for yourself, for other people, will confine you, but love can set you free.

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.

You'll see some great performances [in Fences]. And I'm not just saying that because I directed it either! You'll see!

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.

Viola [Davis] is one of the great actors of her generation. She has one of these moments in the theater that I don't even know how to describe.

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."

We rehearsed for two weeks [in "Fences"], and we taped out the whole house in the front, and the rooms, and we stood it up like a play. We tried to get off book and gave people small props.