I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.

I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).

President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and the gap widening.

One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.

I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead's going to do and then what the bad guy's gonna do. Mostly it's just scripts by the numbers where nothing's surprising, nothing's interesting.

I was about to write that in the future I would chose my words more carefully but I'm sure I won't.

We're always trailing, as far as the amount of roles that are written for us and the films that are being made that have black characters in them. I don't know if that's going to change.