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" At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving. "
Lee Daniels
Surviving
Making Money
Money
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" I don't read the reviews, the blogs, or anything else. Instead, I feel the audience when I show the film. "
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" I like to show the grey area in all my characters. "
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" With TV, you're in people's houses every night. And you have so much time to tell stories. I don't know why I didn't do it before. "
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" I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film. "
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" I had 'Push' and 'The Paperboy' next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels. "
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" What attracts me to material are characters that I know - characters that I know people don't know but I know - and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen. "
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" People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down. "
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" I look at my movies; I call my movies 'the kid.' It's like I'm giving birth. I'm in the cocoon, you know? "
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Birth
Know
Giving
" America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for. "
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Fickle
Go
Know
" I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting. "
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Started
Videos
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" I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think. "
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People
Partner
Truth
" It's hard for me to accept love. I wish I could lie to you and tell you that it's easy for me, but it's not. "
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Wish
You
Easy
" I don't profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They're icons. I'm a filmmaker. "
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Imagination
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" I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff. "
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Want
My Soul
Hollywood
" I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it's not mainstream. "
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I Am
Perspective
Up
" Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be. "
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Out
Up
Thought
" If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me. "
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Money
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End
" I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world. "
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World
African-American
Alone
" When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story. "
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Try
Never
Story
" While I am not a musician, I love music. I have over 15,000 songs on my iPod. Everything from hard core rap to the soundtrack from the original 'Cinderella.' "
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Rap
Love
I Am
" There are servers, and there are people that are served. There's something contradictory about that in a democracy, certainly. "
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About
Something
People
" I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful. "
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Director
Painful
Film
" Theater was always in the backdrop. Nursing was a way to pay the bills. I wasn't a nurse; I had a nursing agency. "
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Agency
Way
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" I drank from colored water fountains and from the white water fountain just to see what it was like when I was a kid. What shocks me is that these kids today don't realize that this happened in many of our lifetimes. "
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Me
White
Fountain
" I was always in trouble. I was mischievous. And movies were always a part of my world. "
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Always
Part
Movies
" I moved on to a nursing agency as a receptionist just to get a job, and ended up managing it, which led to me opening my own - say your mom is sick and needs someone to help her, then you call something like what I had: a home health agency. "
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Job
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Mom
" I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films. "
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Hands-On
Up
Because
" I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful. "
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Work
Fear
Fearful
" I believe in life that you know that everything prepares you for the next thing - whether it's a hit, whether it's not a hit, whether it's a... your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next. "
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Believe
I Believe
Know
" When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar. "
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Where
You
Church