My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name.

My father was the quintessential husband and dad.

I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.

We suffer pain, we hang tight to hope, we nurture expectations, we are plagued occasionally by fears, we are haunted by defeats and unrealized hopes . . . The hoplessness of which I speak is not limited.

We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.

I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.