You know that first of all your films have to make money no matter who you are.

I'm worried just as much about Donald Trump as that crazy guy in North Korea - and he has a nuclear code. I'm worrying about that.

We’ve gone through the names—Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that’s an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black?

Critics like to build you up, tear you down, and then, if you're lucky, build you up again.

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.

There’s always been this hocus-pocus or magical, mystical thing associated with the making of film that sort of psyches people out and makes them think that this cannot be done; that this is a craft that cannot be learned.

A spine to my films that's become more evident to me is that many are about the choices people make, and the reverberations of those choices. You go this way, or that way, and either way, there's going to be consequences.