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

Melvin Van Peebles

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" The artistic world is one of high nuance. "

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

" 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

" 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

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

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

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

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 intend to stay dangerous. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm from the Southside of Chicago. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Scars are the price you pay for success. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I do what I want to do. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

" It wasn't really me who invented rap. I stole the idea from Aristide Bruant. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" There is a downside to affordable technology, and that's mediocrity. I mean, just 'cause you can afford it don't mean you can do it. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" 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

" I have no illusions about running. I hate running. If I could feel as good as I felt at 30 without running, I wouldn't do it, but that's not the way it works! So - no pain, no gain. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" I used to be the third person in the secret jets we had - they were secret at the time - a jet bomber that flew at immense heights carrying atomic bombs. "

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

" 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 are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film. "

Melvin Van Peebles