Parents kill more dreams than anybody.
Always be mine, puppy please, puppy please.
Do the right thing.
As a people we do not need anyone else's stamp of approval.
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
Cause mo better makes it mo better.
Do the Right Thing' was my first union film. I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations.
Critics like to build you up, tear you down, and then, if you're lucky, build you up again.
 that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains. ){kind=small}
Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.
Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.
Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.
And one thing Hollywood does well is sequels.
Amongst black people, you have always heard it said that once a black man reaches a certain level, especially if you are an entertainer, you get a white trophy woman. I didn't make that up.
American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.
America doesn't have the moral right to tell other people what to do. To say the whole world has to fall into line is you-know-what. I hope more people will rise up.
A woman who is very secure in herself, what she's about, what she wants to do, who probably figures that she's a prize catch-sooner or later he's going to come around.
A lot of times, we censor ourselves before the censor even gets there.
A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there.
'She's Gotta Have It' was shot in twelve days and two six-day weeks.
'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.
'25th Hour,' like a lot of my films, takes place in New York City. I've been very fortunate to make films in the city that I live. I mean, it's great going home at night instead of being on location.
A spine to my films that's become more evident to me is that many are about the choices people make, and the reverberations of those choices. You go this way, or that way, and either way, there's going to be consequences.
As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.
As we move toward the millennium, the year 2000, the most powerful nations are not those that have nuclear bombs, but those that control the media. That's where the battle is being fought; that is how you control people's minds.
