I just hope that my films will survive me.

The system gives you two minutes to phrase a whole history.

You need to react. That's the absurdity of Twitter. You can react without thinking now.

Can you imagine in 2016 there is a discussion about #OscarsSoWhite? Is it a novelty we've just discovered that the whole production machine is dominated by only one type of human being, excluding women, excluding gays, excluding minorities? This is not new.

I felt that the world, and in particular this country, were going in circles. What had happened 40 or 50 years ago was happening again, but even in a worse form - that we were sinking into a lot of ignorance and a lot of superficial change.

[James] Baldwin said the real question is not when there will be the first Negro president in this country. The important question is what country he's going to be the president of.

Why would anything change that has not been changed since the existence of cinema? [James] Baldwin somehow wakes you up to reality. It takes you out of the dream - or out of the nightmare.