Spike Lee Quotes

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.

We're so sure of what our unlived lives would have been like that we feel guilty for not living them - for not living up to our potential.

My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

And there have certainly been movies I wanted to be in and milestones I wanted to surpass that did not happen.

My character, Rick Spleen, is a what-if version of me, really, where nothing did quite turn out right and everything else is still around the corner.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

It's sad that some people who have one exciting moment spend the rest of their lives rehashing it.

What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore .... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotencies.

My father wanted a boy. I was supposed to be called Albert. That was probably the beginning of why things got so complicated, because I wasn't a boy.

As time goes on, we suppress our dreams, which really makes me sad.

It is hard when you think you can do better, but things just aren't working out.

I was surrounded by a lot of people not doing what they wanted to do.

I think sometimes it's hard, parent's expectations, wanting to be seen by the people in your family and feeling that you can't do that, you can't get them to see you the way that you want to be seen, and come to an understanding or find a way to talk that doesn't revert to bad habits.

I've worked with kids that are just horrendous, and it's mostly because of their parents.

Maybe I was intimidated by my father's talent and success.

Having been built in the fashion I was as a child - created and then deflated - has left me with a distinct feeling of failure. Because I did not live up to my precocity, I experience it to be like a cross between a has-been and a never-was.

I wanted to be a dramatic actress. Life doesn't go the way you think it's going to go.

I missed a whole cycle of childhood, but I've never used it as a device for self-pity.

When I was born, my mother was very disappointed. She wanted a son. I knew that from a very early age. So I was a tomboy.