Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs.

I heard about crack on the news and I was like, "Oh, that's what the niggas must be doing." And when I kept coming outside, I was doing my own little jostlin' to get my money.

Me, myself, I was a part of gang bangin', you know what I'm sayin'?

I grew up in Compton: 116th and Wilmington.

The gang culture - tragically - has for some young people become the only source of stability in their lives.

Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?

I lived the street life for a minute; I lost a lot of friends.

We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.

Drugs ruin peoples lives, break up families and have disastrous effects on our communities.

I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is.

But the drugs are kind of like taboo, at least among me and my friends and the people I've worked with.

Now as far as the organization selling drugs, no. Individuals selling drugs is something else.

In fact, street gangs are the primary distributor of illegal drugs in the United States.

Yes, there was nothing else to do to get you high. I mean, there was, but white kids didn't hear about it.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

When we meet, I'm interested and I'm curious about what he's doing because he's burning a number from a client. And I'm like, 'Who is this?' and my girlfriend's like, 'That's a drug dealer. Stay away from him.'

Teen drug use went up dramatically in the 1990s.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.

Crack has destroyed more families than poverty.

In some of our public schools drugs are easier to obtain than text books.

I grew up in the streets of Pueblo [Colorado]. I never knew marijuana was illegal,

There were uncles in my life that definitely knew the street life.

In my family and in my community, I see people struggling with drug addiction, with poverty and the effects of generational poverty; I see people struggling with lack of access to healthcare.

I didn't have to leave my neighborhood to be surrounded by the things that 'Super Fly' is about. It was easier than most scripts because it was about an environment that I knew.

I don't have anything new to say about teenagers.