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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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" I want to live in my truth. Tell me you don't like me, and I know it. But when you don't tell me, and you work behind my back, it's a lie, and I don't know how to fight that. "

Lee Daniels

Fight

Lie

" 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. "

Lee Daniels

Money

End

" My mom knew early on that I was gay, and she knew that I had to get out of the ghetto. "

" I want to go to places that are unexpected of me because people really think they have me pegged. "

" My earliest experience was reading Edward Albee's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' at 8, you know, with a bunch of kids on my steps - on the stoops - and knowing that I wanted to direct them saying the lines. I don't really know how to articulate that 'cause there wasn't someone to show me. "

Lee Daniels

Reading

Experience

" That's the gift 'Precious' has given me. You really think you're telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we're all Precious. "

" I was the oldest of five children, each about a year apart, and my mother, bless her heart, had her hands full. "

" 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. "

Lee Daniels

Job

Mom

" 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. "

" America is fickle. You never know what they're going to go for. "

Lee Daniels

Fickle

Know

" I have a partner, Danny Strong; he's an incredible writer and, really, my backbone. So when we don't see eye to eye, it's painful. "

" Rarely do celebrities and actors speak up for what they believe in. "

Lee Daniels

Speak

Rarely

" I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera. "

" 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. "

" I definitely caught the acting bug, but that lasted for about two seconds when I found my way to L.A. and found that my talents were better suited behind the cameras. "

" I had 'Push' and 'The Paperboy' next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels. "

" I was always intrigued with European cinema, and hated most American cinema. I didn't like the one, two, three - boom! style, with a neat and tidy ending. That was never my scene. "

" 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.' "

" Most actors want the audience to like them, and that leads to bad acting. "

" 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. "

" To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play. "

" I'm not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I'm here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas. "

" Most of my friends are dead. I watched friends die in my arms at 5, 6, 8. When I grew up, the rest of my friends died of AIDS. "

" I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people. "

Lee Daniels

Black

People

" I went back-to-back from 'Paperboy' to 'Butler,' literally with no break. "

" 'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid. "

" I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated. "

" The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film. "

" At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving. "

" 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. "

Lee Daniels

Out

Thought