We just had to stay out-of-the-way [in Fences]. [August Wilson] already wrote a masterpiece. And you really don't know how it's going to work until you get it in front of an audience.

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.

I'll be working with Ridley's [Scott] brother, Tony, again, someone who needless to say we've had a great amount of success together. I trust him - so I won't have to think about it or I'll try not to.

There are films that I don't like, and then someone will come up to me and say it's their favorite movie. The movies belong to the people. You make them and you put them out. For me, I love the process of making films. For me, my favorite film is always my next one.

If you don't love your fellow man, women, person, then you don't have anything. If you don't treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated that to me is the fundamental message.

When I did A Soldier's Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

Success? I don't know what that word means. I'm happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody's eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That's a good day for me.