I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage--self destructive, destroy the world rage--and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.

You don't have to become something you're not to be better than you were.

In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man.

I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.

My father was the quintessential husband and dad.

I have a kind of respect - a worshipful attitude, even - for nature and the natural order and the cosmos and the seasons.