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" I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it - all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species. "

Sidney Poitier

Beginning

World

Understanding

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" My wife collects knickknacks. "

Sidney Poitier

Wife

" So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was. "

" I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before. "

" I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values. "

" I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for those put aside for people of my colour or caste. "

" Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no. "

" I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her. "

Sidney Poitier

God

Mother

" My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name. "

" I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life. "

" So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness. "

Sidney Poitier

Life

Much

" My autobiography was simply the story of my life. "

" I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me. "

Sidney Poitier

Vision

Business

" My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man. "

" A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another. "

" I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable. "

" I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions. "

" Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's. "

" I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being. "

" I don't very often read novels. "

" I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place. "

" I have always been a learner because I knew nothing. "

" An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return. "

Sidney Poitier

Satisfied

Return

" But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots. "

" Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures. "

" In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man. "

Sidney Poitier

Body

Man

" I'm going to quit writing. "

" I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life. "

" I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month. "

" Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth. "

" I'm a good person. "