I just felt that Danny Rand within the Luke Cage universe... I just felt that he was going to be dope.

The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.

Hip hop fans are obsessed, and they're geeks about hip hop. Comic book fans are also geeks, and when you can meld the two, then you open the world up to, I think, communities that will just take to each other.

The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.

You can't really say that Bushmaster or Mariah Dillard is a bigger bad, because they both do some pretty heinous things.

Most superheroes, when you look at origin stories - before they invent their costume, they just go with what's around.

I finally achieved my dream by being a TV showrunner.

The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew - and he was right - that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.

My era was '90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That's my rock n' roll.

When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.

The first 'Creed' is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Even though my approach is slightly different, the Luke Cage of 'Jessica Jones' is no stranger to the Luke Cage of Marvel's 'Luke Cage.' It's really a continuation to a certain extent. It's just got a little different flavor, but it's still the same suit.

'Daredevil' is haunted by Frank Miller, from the standpoint of the Frank Miller run on 'Daredevil' is so insurmountable.

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

Fatherhood is something that is personal to me because I didn't grow up around my father.

It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.

All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

People underestimate hip-hop the way they have sometimes underestimated comic books.

Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.

The first time that I met B.I.G. was in 1994, summer of '94 - I believe it was August. I think it was right after 'Ready to Die' came out.

One of my favorite comic books of all-time is the graphic novel 'God Loves, Man Kills.'

All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.

The reason that Shaft has a dominant theme song is because James Bond has a dominant theme song.

Honestly, what 'Luke Cage' is - it's a hip-hop Western. And you have Luke Cage as the sheriff of Harlem.

To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.

As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.

'The Wire' is, by far, my favorite television show of all time. And I've always said that my aspirations for 'Luke Cage' was that it would be 'The Wire' of the Marvel television universe.

One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'

I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.

The difference between a Marvel superhero and a DC superhero is that we place Marvel superheroes in the real world that we recognize and that we know.

Alfre Woodard is a powerhouse, master actor, but she's also someone that you want to interact with, someone that you want to talk to.

That's the thing about TV: it gives you so much time to tell your story; it's comparable to comics.

If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.

I wanted Luke Cage to very much be an African American superhero rather than a superhero that happens to be black. I felt it was important to give him that cultural grounding but also show that it doesn't make him an obtuse or one-sided character.

It's important to for your kids to see themselves in their superheroes. Really, it's important for all of us.

Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.

My mom and dad met at U. Conn., and their lives couldn't have been more different in terms of their upbringing.

Television has power.

Even though I've got this really brawny, masculine reputation, I'm a Shondaland Thursdays kind of guy.

I'm a hip-hop showrunner.

For me, hip-hop has always been black superhero music.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was when the original 'Secret Wars' came out with the debut of the black costume for Spider-Man. I remember I couldn't wait to get home to read it, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, I've been waiting for this comic to come out. I hope, God forbid, nothing happens to me before I get home to read it.'

Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.

When you're writing about cops from the perspective of cops, that level of sarcasm about their job and how they treat people will color the writing to a certain extent.

The only thing police patrol cops - in certain situations - are expert at is spotting anomalies. When you are a black person that is driving in a place that you stick out, that's all they're going to see.

The thing that all police officers decide when they wake up in the morning is that they're going home.

I think the fact that 'Black Lightning,' 'Luke Cage' and 'Black Panther' have each made noise in their own way will only lead to different superheroes and different genres.

The Caribbean is such a rich place, and Jamaica, personally, is one of my favorite places in the world. I've been lucky to, on various projects, to have spent a lot of time down there.

Netflix likes critical attention, and they like their analytics.