Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to be a part of great things.
Yeah! I went to the set of Monuments Men.
I think having good family and friends really helps to ground you.
You should do what you're supposed to do and hope that that ripples out.
Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.
I think it’s intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.
But I think it's intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.
I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.
It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.
Is there a way to discuss climate change without politics or religion getting in the way?
I was about to write that in the future I would chose my words more carefully but I'm sure I won't.
I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.
Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.
I used to record but just in my own studio or in my friend's back when I toyed with the idea of being a rapper.
I think if you were to look at my resume in total you would see a lot of things that are kind of all over the map.
One truth that I know for sure, for me anyway, is that the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know.
We're really trying to give people the ability to go into a darkened room and have a couple hours of just pure enjoyment.
It is the least represented among us who will be the most affected first. We have a moral responsibility to protect them.
We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.
Every time I've learned something, I've realized there are a hundred more things I don't know about the thing I just learned.
But most scripts are terrible. Most projects are bad, that's just kind of the way it is. And I'm not really attracted to those.
I think that it's much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know?
So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.
I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs.
If you look up and no one who's around you has been around you for the past 20 years, and they're all new people, I think that's a problem.
It's much easier to cry or be angry, but to really laugh and genuinely be buoyant and laugh. That's hard if you don't really feel that way.
People have always been obsessed by celebrities. There are just more outlets and opportunities to make a living exploiting that obsession nowadays.
I pray that our leaders stop pointing fingers and playing the blame game and seek a real solution for the good of the planet and all who inhabit it.
It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.
I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things.
I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).
I understand what's it like to work all week and on Friday night just want to go and leave your brain at the door, buy some popcorn and be thrilled by something.
I don't believe that the U.S. needs to take a police role. I think it needs to support African nations that have said they want to become a part of the solution.
No, it's not comfortable; I hate watching myself. You don't like when you hear your voice on your voicemail; imagine having to see yourself 30 feet wide and 30 feet big.
The best thing that I learned from the best directors that I worked with is that the best answer wins. They are ego-less when it comes to doing the most important thing.
If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?
If people in this country think of Africa as a place with kids and flies swarming around their heads, then they won't understand that these people are you and you are them.
The fun for me is to mix it all up. I would actually like to do something as far away from what I've just done, just for my own personal joy and growth, for what I want to do.
One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.
For me, it's always just been about finding material that I think is creative and interesting and fun and something that can expand me and that I can hopefully do something with.
When I'm the person in front of the microphone, and I'm the person in the light, I want to reflect and refract the light onto places where they need the attention, where I don't need it.
We're always trailing, as far as the amount of roles that are written for us and the films that are being made that have black characters in them. I don't know if that's going to change.
I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead's going to do and then what the bad guy's gonna do. Mostly it's just scripts by the numbers where nothing's surprising, nothing's interesting.
I think we should all be more concerned about the environment and the effects of global warming. It will be pointless to talk about all the issues that divide us when it's 300 degrees outside.
I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.
Water is an issue, and, clearly, what's happening with the filth in our environment and the levels of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere are the really scary issues right now, the very troubling ones.
Comedies are very hard to do. They are difficult. Unless there's the Judd Apatow school, where they're like okay, we know that, we're going to do those. Or unless it's something that's far to the other side.
I started following the news and seeing what was happening around the world with the polar ice caps melting and temperatures breaking records. I became concerned as an animal on this planet but also as a father.
I think if you're going to read reviews, you have to just concede that they are all right. And I think I read two very diametrically opposed reviews about my movie and I had to go, yeah, I agree with both of them.
Many of my friends and family are scratching it out somewhere decidedly south of the ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, looking at losing their homes, colleges they can't afford and healthcare they can't avail themselves of.