The more powerful you become, the less likely it is that people will tell you the truth. It must be why the 'Harry Potter' books become so bloated as the series progresses; think of the beautiful, precise editing of books 1-3 drowned in a mire of sycophancy and yea-saying.
I don't hear record companies coming up with any good ideas or suggestions. Historically, if it ain't their idea, it ain't no good, so you got that to contend with.
'Precious' is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I'm prejudiced. I'm prejudiced against people who are darker than me.
The judgments our enemies make about us come nearer to the truth than those we make about ourselves.
Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.
I love finding out why people don't love things. And if you ask people why they don't like things, particularly when they get into this sort of culture box, you find out that they're not liking things because of what people are going to think about them, and not because of what the things actually sound like.
Unfortunately, oftentimes people hire and give opportunities to people that look like them. They don't realize how much their own internal lives or privilege gets in the way of looking for people outside of the traditional spaces where they always find people.
Racism is within each and every one of us.
Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.
We cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for.
Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears, prejudices, misconceptions - those are the peers and they are hereditary.
I think of myself as kind of a hippy. Everyone around me says that's not the impression they get. They think I'm sassy. Apparently, I think I'm nicer than I really am.
Nobody forced me to look any way. I just exaggerated what was already there.
It's the people who don't recognize the racism within themselves that can be the most damaging because they don't see it.
The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.
People either hate me or dislike me - but I realized that people aren't against you, they are for themselves. We're all prejudiced in favor of ourselves.
To be honest, it's hard when you're knee-deep in the trenches of an industry to see it how others see it.
