Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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? "

Related Quotes:

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

" 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. "

" I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire. "

" When you have a lot of siblings, you always do something to feel special. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films. "

" I like to show the grey area in all my characters. "

" I don't know whether everybody likes the films that I do. I know that I love them, and I believe the way that I raise my kids that they will love them, and that's what most important to me. "

" As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace. "

" There are servers, and there are people that are served. There's something contradictory about that in a democracy, certainly. "

" My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote 'The Butler' and originally wanted to do 'Empire' also as a movie. "

" 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 think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals. "

" I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful. "

" I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful. "

" Putting on a movie is like going to war - for me, at least. It's all about time; time is money, and we don't have it. So it's all about getting to know each other intimately quickly. You are with family members that you like or don't like, but you can't leave them because you're stuck with them. "

" I've had all types of beautiful girls tell me that they ugly when they look in the mirror, as if it's someone else's reflection they see. "

" 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. "

" '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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" People enjoy making fun of people who are famous; they love putting people down. "

" My mission is to let black kids know that their dreams can happen. "

" 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. "

African-American

" I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices. "