Director

One of the biggest regrets of my whole career was turning down an offer to direct on the first season of 'The Wire.' That would have been so perfect for me.

I met Tupac through Queen Latifah in New York at this party that we were at, at a place downtown called Big City Diner.

I like John Hughes movies.

I'm a competitive guy.

Cinema was my rite of passage.

Ja Rule not doing '2 Fast 2 Furious' changed Ludacris's life.

The more people who see a film, the more life it has. But I don't like when people watch DVDs and look at two scenes, but they don't look at the whole movie. Or they sit and talk to each other. You should always watch a movie all the way through.

I can't watch a movie and watch just two minutes and turn it off, then go talk to my girlfriend.

When I was small, in the early '70s, my mother took me to see 'Cooley High.'

I'm a huge DVD fan.

I try to keep focused on the things that really make me happy and just do those same things.

We have these rules, the 'hero rules.' Like, a hero doesn't slouch. A hero walks proudly with his head up. A hero walks with a purpose. A hero's always a gentleman.

I've been nominated for Academy Awards, I know what I'm doing.

In 'Boyz N the Hood,' every female character was three-dimensional.

The plain truth is, 'Fruitvale Station' was made totally outside the Hollywood studio system, and every ounce of the picture feels authentic. The lives of the people involved in the movie will never be the same.

There's this guy: his name, Sedik Ali. He's like the African Kurosawa. You know how Kurosawa does stuff from feudal Japan? This guy does the feudal system of Africa.

My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.

As a storyteller, when you see somebody who is the character you envisioned, you feel this energy in the room.

I already have legitimacy as a filmmaker and now I'm trying to do stuff that's just fun. Until I find a cool tangible subject again that I want to tackle.

All the kids looked up to my father because he was known to be that dude who knocks people out.