I don't have any intentions to return to England. I would go back if I could return as a free person. I don't want to return to prison.
I'll be vilified if I shoot a film in Toronto for New York. And rightfully so!
I believe in destiny. But I also believe that you can’t just sit back and let destiny happen. A lot of times, an opportunity might fall into your lap, but you have to be ready for that opportunity. You can’t sit there waiting on it. A lot of times you are going to have to get out there and make it happen.
I think black people have to be in control of their own image because film is a powerful medium. We can't just sit back and let other people define our existence.
You gotta make your own way. You gotta find a way. You gotta get it done. It's hard. It's tough. That's what I tell my students every day in class. I've been very fortunate. Some people might call me a hardhead, but I'm not going to let other people dictate to me who I should be or the stories I should tell. That doesn't register with me.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.
I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
When you relate to thoughts obsessively, you are actually feeding them because thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful. You are feeding them energy because you are not seeing them as simple phenomena. If one tries to quiet them down, that is another way of feeding them.
If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.
People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'