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.

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.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.

Water is an issue, and, clearly, what's happening with the filth in our environment and the levels of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere are the really scary issues right now, the very troubling ones.

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

I was brought into the curiosity of it because with Sony Pictures Classics, which bought the movie, they look into what the feedback is and base that off of how they release it, and you end up hearing the feedback and getting that early talk. So the reviews early on that were "bad reviews," they were kind of reviewing another movie.