John David Washington Quotes

Woody Allen was the reason I wanted to move to New York City and one of the reasons I wanted to make films. I felt that I understood his films, and I love them so much. When you're starting out, certainly, you have this sense of wanting to talk back to people who have influenced you, and I always wanted to talk back to Woody Allen.

All of my heroes, like Dali, are people who pioneered various forms of cinema.

Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films.

Any creator owes a debt to past creation.

You don't create legends out of other legends.

So many people - DPs, writers, and the assistants that go on to be directors and writers - come from the School of Spike Lee. He's almost set up an Institution of Spike Lee.

We’re all children of Kubrick, aren’t we? Is there anything you can do that he hasn’t done?

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means.

Someone very smart once said to me, "Steal, don't borrow." So if there's anything good in anything anyone else does, it's fair game. I think that everything I've ever done at some point is part of someone else's legacy.

It took me six years to get close to Picasso. I learnt a lot from him, and he was an absolute genius. He almost became my grandfather at the time. It was like he was a magician or something.

I know when somebody's heard my music. I can hear it in their music.

I grew up as a kid looking at artists like David Bowie and Prince; I really admired them.

There are artists, true performers that have come before me who have been a big inspiration to me. I hope I do the same for others.

I can understand when people copy people of the past and make the future their own.

I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

I have enormous respect for Steve Johnson, and as I've told him, Feed was one of the inspirations for Salon. They were up there before we were. And also for Joey and the Suck people.

My job is to inspire the people, to be on top of my game and push my culture forward.

Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.

I'm always looking at other artists and trying to get inspired by different things.

If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.

The innovative process is a fragile one, dependent on a complex, often messy interplay of imagination, competition, and exchange. Curbing new ideas hurts not only individual creators but the audience for which they create and the posterity that inherits their legacy.

I don't pay that much attention to sales figures or awards. To me, the big question is: 'Did you influence the next generation?' That's my goal.

My mom was a '70s mom. She paved a road that no one had yet walked.