It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

I don't dictate, you don't dictate to Stevie Wonder, not successfully.

I don't think I'm a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films.

I am a hybrid. I do independent films and also do Hollywood films - I love them both.

You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class. I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.

Making films has got to be one of the hardest endeavors known to humankind.

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.