The first thing that always pops into my head regarding our president, is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him... They just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white - very white; American, Kansas, middle of America. There is no argument about who he is, or what he is. America's first black president hasn't arisen yet. He's not America's first black president. He's America's first mixed-race president.

Let me tell you about being executive producer. It is not a job, it's a title. Don't go around asking executive producers what they do because they don't do anything, alright?

Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.

That is a big turn-on for me, a director who knows what he's doing and what he wants, and knows when he's gotten what he wants.

I once heard a wise man say there are no perfect men. Only perfect intentions.

Literacy could be the ladder out of poverty

When I was growing up, I didn't see me in the movies except in certain lesser roles. If it wasn't funny, I wasn't there. Then Sidney Poitier came along, and he wasn't funny. He was just good. There's me. So that was my pattern.