When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.

I think that [Barack] Obama was elected because young people are starting to get interested in their country and I think that's a very healthy thing.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

The learning process continues until the day you die.

I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn't even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.

I'm a loner clear down deep to my guts.