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.

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've dodged all sorts of bullets in Hollywood to get my movies made. I'm tough.

I can't do movies where you start thinking "Where's the commercial appeal? How are we going to market this?" It's not that kind of party.

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.

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

I want to go to places that are unexpected of me, because people really think they have me pegged. I want to do something different, like maybe do a space movie or a musical.

Trust is hard to get from actors, and for me to give to actors.

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

I'm not tough when it comes to people criticizing the people that I protect, and those are the actors. It makes them scared to do it again for another director.

My philosophy has always been, you don't put your name in front of a movie.

Paper has more patience than people.

Barack Obama was better as a campaigner than as a - as a president sometimes in this same position. It is easier when you have a foil.

My husband, Nick Chiles and I wrote a number of relationship books together, and what we found was that women were thirsty to hear directly from men.

My aunt in Knoxville would bring newspapers up, which we used for toilet paper. Before we used it, we'd look at the pictures.

Sorry I don't eat buffalo.

The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free.

I knew de Kooning and I went to his studio so I knew about de Kooning's work. But only a little handful knew about it, you know. Maybe there were ten people that knew about it.

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

American is the first democratic nation-state.

I would advise budding writers some other kind of job, unless they think they're very, very lucky.