Quotes on Movies

I've never been that much of a money guy. I'm more of a film guy, and most of the money I've made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.

Movies are dreams! And they work on you subliminally.

There are plenty of movies that you need to chew on a bit. Movies that you return to and see something different in the second time around.

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.

My agent said, 'You aren't good enough for movies.' I said, 'You're fired.'

A lot of the time, when I find myself critiquing scientific accuracy in movies, I have to remind myself that it had to get close enough to getting it right to get things wrong.

I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.

I make movies in order to make things understood, not to be shocking.

If, in 2014, we're still making 'white savior movies,' then it's just lazy and unfortunate. We've grown up as a country, and cinema should be able to reflect what's true. And what's true is that black people are the center of their own lives and should tell their own stories from their own perspectives.

One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: you are.

For a long time, I bought into the idea that if you are a woman who is a storyteller and a lover of movies, then the best way to express that is as an actress. Obviously, there are women my age who are directors who didn't buy into that idea, but I did - and now I've broken that down inside myself.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.