A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.

If you want to make a movie, make it. Don't wait for a grant, don't wait for the perfect circumstances, just make it.

I remember, like, literally saying - watching some cowboy-and-Indian movie with my mother, and I go, so, if we were back then, we'd be the Indians, right? She goes, yup, that's who we'd be. We wouldn't be those guys in the covered wagons. We'd be the Indians.

I have loved movies as the number one thing in my life so long that I can't ever remember a time when I didn't.

You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me.

I've always thought my soundtracks do pretty good, because they're basically professional equivalents of a mix tape I'd make for you at home.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but when you try to deal with prescient themes in the present, that is what you're doing.