Either you care, or you don't. There's no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.

Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

Never say no to an idea - you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.

Everybody has their black moments.

I'm just an old man and I smell bad, remember?

I haven't had one sexual thought since the court martial.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.

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.