Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

Science is but an image of the truth.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

I think if you make a good movie, people walk away arguing.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

Spending time with God through prayer and His Word is a prerequisite for having a great life and fulfilling your purpose.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

The truth is lived, not taught.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

I always put myself out there. I’m not afraid to commit to something.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

I think everybody’s trying to get to a place in themselves where they conquer what they was afraid of; they achieve some of their life goals, kept their word about what they were trying to do.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.