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" Big publishers want you to change this and change that. I'd rather go to a little publisher - who needs the tsuris. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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" It must be horrible to do things that you don't like hoping to please other people, and they don't like it either, and you've got to eat it. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The studios didn't really take independent films seriously, till 'Sweetback' was such a financial success. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I said to my kids, 'Learn the business of America if you want to be an artist in America. The rest of that stuff, the art part, you could pick up in an hour and a half.' "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" It wasn't really me who invented rap. I stole the idea from Aristide Bruant. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" In the morning, I get the paper. I look in the obituary column. If I don't see myself in there, I get up. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" A bumblebee can't fly. He's aerodynamically unsound. But he doesn't know that. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Our minds are not our friends when they realize we have work to do - they're our enemies. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Before me, music soundtracks were sort of afterthoughts. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" As a navigator, I started studying astronomy because sometimes you're not able to use the equipment, so you'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, figuring out what you were seeing in the sky. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" You've got to really check on what you're doing: check and recheck it seven other times to be prepared. Sometimes, people get carried away with the artistic-ness of the endeavor and don't quite have their game face on when the time comes. It's always a pretty costly mistake. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Over time, you accumulate a lot of life material. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I graduated from college when I was 20. To get enough money to finish college, I went into the ROTC, and I was an officer in the Air Force before I could buy a drink. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" If I had to find one characteristic that is most symbolic of me, I think I am tenacious. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" What some folks find funny, other folks find tragic. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Personally, I do movies the way I cook: I put in what I like in case nobody else likes it and I have to eat it for the rest of the week. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I work from a subjective palette. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm pretty much a loner. That's not good, bad, or indifferent. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Making 'Sweetback' took an exorbitant amount of energy and time. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Somebody once asked me, 'Melvin, how'd you get to the top?' It was simple. Nobody would let me in at the bottom. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I used to be the third person in the secret jets we had - they were secret at the time - a jet bomber that flew at immense heights carrying atomic bombs. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The graphic novel is a great form that can be used to marry the book format with the movie. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Scars are the price you pay for success. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I didn't even know I had a legacy. "

Melvin Van Peebles