People are quick to make monuments of anything they live long enough to control.

I think you're not really teaching anyone unless you're learning yourself.

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they're babies.

I was so well loved by my mother that if people have any expectations of me I really don't notice because I'm hardest on myself.

Inspiration takes many forms, but it's rarely pure.

Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time?

One of the things I noticed when I worked at Vibe was that backstage at a fashion show, they always referred to the black models as "black girls." I thought, "They never say 'white girls.'

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

Who says reading should be easy? Shouldn't it challenge you as hard sometimes as love. Maybe "hard" is not the right word in this context. Ha!

There were so few black men who were successful and who successfully conveyed black male fear - how America can make you feel crazy, and how America can create interesting levels of contradiction.

I'm a draftsperson. And also, I really respond to love.

The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.

Shared grief is just pride with a sad face.

I'm French, so I'm quite lazy about exercising, and I smoke. But I do love going for a run in the morning with my dog. That's all.

Simplicity and sexiness, that's what people want. At a price that's not outrageous.

Working on a film, the setup for an action sequence takes a long time, and we need to shoot the scene many times to get different angles.

The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges makes life worth living.

There is nothing like the start of a season, before all the one-run losses, pitching breakdowns and missed opportunities. Before reality sets in.

This is alchemy, and this is the office of Vulcan; he is the apothecary and chemist of the medicine.