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

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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. "

" I've met Shonda Rhimes a few times, and certainly she's an inspiration for me in television. "

" 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 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. "

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

" Here's the thing: I think the media underestimates the intelligence of the moviegoer. We need to be fulfilled. People want to sit down and think, and I try to make people think. "

" 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. "

" It's hard for me to accept love. I wish I could lie to you and tell you that it's easy for me, but it's not. "

" 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 profess to be Shonda Rhimes by any stretch of the imagination, or Dick Wolf. They're icons. I'm a filmmaker. "

" In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans. "

" I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it's not mainstream. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 want to learn. I want to stretch my muscles as a director and work under different circumstances. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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