The role James Baldwin played in my life is incommensurable as stated above. He helped, along with a few others, to shape the man that I am today. My debt to him is invaluable.

[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.

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

Just try to be yourself and resist complacency and ignorance. All you can do is work, work; work and be disciplined.

I just hope that my films will survive me.

[James] Baldwin is needed even more today because he helps you focus to the essential, to what is important.

[James] Baldwin was a celebrity. A TV show like Kenneth Clark could put him aside of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He was, at least, one of the three most important spokesmen of the movement and of the black community.