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" Over time, you accumulate a lot of life material. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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" Personally, I do movies the way I cook: I put in what I like in case nobody else likes it and I have to eat it for the rest of the week. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I graduated from college when I was 20. To get enough money to finish college, I went into the ROTC, and I was an officer in the Air Force before I could buy a drink. "

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

" When I was in the Air Force, if I walked into a restaurant, in about eight or nine minutes the M.P.'s would show up and drag me out because someone had called saying that someone was impersonating an officer. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Whitey is uptight about offending blacks without really knowing what offends blacks. "

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

" No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" You've got to really check on what you're doing: check and recheck it seven other times to be prepared. Sometimes, people get carried away with the artistic-ness of the endeavor and don't quite have their game face on when the time comes. It's always a pretty costly mistake. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" Our minds are not our friends when they realize we have work to do - they're our enemies. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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

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

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

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm too short to play basketball and too nervous to steal. "

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

" My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Music - some people just don't know that part of me. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I work from a subjective palette. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My life and career is defined by the constant pursuit of new forms of culture and self-expression. "

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

" Scars are the price you pay for success. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I do what I want to do. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" After 'Don't Play Us Cheap,' I got very busy with theater and Wall Street. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" Big publishers want you to change this and change that. I'd rather go to a little publisher - who needs the tsuris. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I went to a number of schools when I was a kid on the south side of Chicago. "

Melvin Van Peebles