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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 wanted to make a black 'Dynasty.' "

" I think it's very important that we don't sound like militants. Often what we do is we give a comment, and because it comes across with passion, then we're 'angry black people.' "

" 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. "

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

" I worked at Warner Bros. for a while. I was the head of the minority talent casting. It was like pre-Spike Lee and post-blaxploitation era. "

" 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 thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day. "

" My work is therapeutic: 'Monster's Ball,' 'Woodsman' and 'Shadowboxer,' because I don't go to therapy, and I sort of live life through my films. "

" 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 always question if somebody else is going to love my films. I think that's what art is about - it's so individual. "

" I want to see movies I can walk away from and say, 'Wait, what happened there? Hold up, what did I just see? What?' and then it connects to something that you personally, unequivocally know to be truth. "

" 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. "

" When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar. "

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

" 'Empire' was a very traumatic experience for me. It was very schizophrenic, and it wasn't what I expected it to be. "

" I have twins that I didn't want to have the life that I had. I didn't have a great life growing up. "

" 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. "

" I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span. "

" 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 had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it. "

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

" I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Stars make money on real movies. They make big money on real movies. To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. "

" 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. "

" Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to. "

" 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. "

" Some of my friends don't have a cell phone. Patti LaBelle doesn't have a cell phone. "

" 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. "