I like Nora Ephron. She wasn't a critic in the strictest sense of the word, but she did a lot of social criticism. She was so funny and so in the right place at the right time.

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.

The bravery of Stanley Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' amounted to two Hollywood legends - Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - telling the world that a black son-in-law is something they can live with, and so should you, especially if he looks like Sidney Poitier and has degrees.

Anything produced and then exhibited for public view is open to interpretation.

Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York.

The problem with a lot of movies when it comes to race is that they want to be moral, and they want to make the audience feel good about something that a lot of people don't feel good about.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.