I've had many incidents in my life of racism. I've been thrown on the ground. I've been frisked. I've been arrested so many times I couldn't tell you. I have no need to talk about it.

I think the only consistent thing is that I like projects that explore different social themes. 'Our Family Wedding' is a comedy, but it deals with two different cultures coming together. It's also about people letting go.

Good science fiction is always based in contemporary truths.

If I go to a reunion in east Texas, my mother's side or my father's, one out of ten is a preacher or a teacher. That's just the way it is in my family.

Ultimately, all human beings fulfill their patterns. We're set in a certain archetype, and we fulfill that destiny.

My eye? It's a genetic thing. My dad had it, and now I have it. You know, I just found out that it may be correctable a little bit, because it does impair my vision. When I look up, I lose sight in this eye. I think, maybe for other people, it informs the way they see me.

I'm always surprised when an actor goes so deeply into the truth that they shake you to your core.

I think I've made some choices that maybe I wasn't so sure about for some reason or another. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Even when I was young, I played Bird, and that's a role people wait for their whole lifetime.

It's hard for me to judge my own films as an artist sometimes. But as an artist, I did feel a fulfillment working on them, you know?

I had been playing really interesting roles before I got great roles. Little ones - 'The Crying Game' I loved working on, and then 'Bird,' 'Ghost Dog,' so many films.

In life, there's a ladder sometimes, and maybe at the top, there's a mirror. You take a step up, then maybe three steps down... just because you don't want to face the decloaking in the mirror.

I stay true because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character. It's the thing that connects him to me and to everybody else. So, the search is the same. It's to unveil the truth, and that's how I stay true, because my purpose isn't altered.

I try to live my life in a holistic way, show that all of it intersects because I'm coming from the same place. Now, at the core of it, I'm just trying to connect and be there, so I'm trying to be there for my family, my wife, my kids, my friends.

I'd spend every summer in Longview on my grandfather's farm. It was a tiny little town divided by a river, which was the segregation line: that side white, this side black. And meanwhile, I lived in Compton - basically, another whole world sealed into 10 square blocks. It's interesting how insular an environment can be.

You have to ask if the country would have been ready for Barack Obama if we hadn't been prepared by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. If they hadn't already been in positions of enormous power and influence - secretary of state, secretary of defence - you know what I mean?

May we remain connected in love. We are one.

The first time I ever went out of the country, it was to London. I was with the choir from my college, and we were touring around all these different churches. I loved it so much I tried to find a way to stay there.

If there is inequality, and that equates with colour, then I'm going to deal with it.

Poitier opened the doors to so many artists, not just black artists. There is a line that goes from black to Latin to Asian with regards to roles.

I can't say I follow it, but I've watched 'Downton Abbey' a couple of times and loved it.

I always stand up for what I believe and what I want to.

I think I didn't know whether I wanted to keep acting deep into my career. I kept trying to see if I would be able to do it well enough to make that part of my destiny or part of what I was supposed to do.

I really wasn't even sure if I should continue acting. I would like try and figure out if I could be good enough to do it. It was like 10 or 12 years into my career before I felt like maybe I can do it. It was such a different time than now.

I care about people. In the end, I think they feel it. It comes across, regardless of the character I'm portraying.