I just realized that I need to be a director - for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to; when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my fingers upon thee!

When I'm writing in my bedroom, in a bar, at my kitchen table or wherever, I'm conjuring it all up on the page. That's all well and good, but it is going to be a limited perspective at that point and time. Occasionally, what I write might read really well initially, but then you change your mind while hunting for locations when you discover settings which offer even better opportunities for drama or dramatic staging.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

It's very important that every movie I do makes money because I want the people that had the faith in me to get their money back.

Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.

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.