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" I've never been to film school. I had to leave this country to make a film. All they would let me do in Hollywood was be a messenger. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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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. "

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

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" If you look down a barrel of a gun... you don't forget it. "

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" If I was just a creator, I would still be back in the Lincoln annex in the Post Office. "

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" I work from a subjective palette. "

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

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" I walk down the street; the garbagemen will shout at me, and we'll talk. That's a pleasure when people feel, 'If he can do it, I can, too.' "

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" Why not have fun, man? If I feel like doing something, I just go ahead and do it. "

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" Don't ask me something if you don't want to know. Because I will tell you. "

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" I intend to stay dangerous. "

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

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

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" With 'Sweetback,' I just put it together a little bit at a time. I didn't do it on anybody's grant. I did it like any other young executive - by cheating and stealing! "

Melvin Van Peebles

" When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously. "

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

" Me and modesty don't mix. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Truth of the matter is, I can't even read or write music. "

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

" 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

" Blacks had a huge role in settling the West, but you'd never know it from Western movies. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" When I got to Paris, they welcomed me and showed my films. It was August of 1960, and I didn't have a penny in my pocket. But they had done something very dangerous: They had given me encouragement. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I was getting my Ph.D. in Holland - I speak Dutch - for a number of years before I moved to France because I had one of those offers you couldn't turn down. They offered me to come and do my films. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The artistic world is one of high nuance. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

" If you give people something they want, they'll come and see 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