American Quotes

I'm a firm believer and I think my religion is inside.

I was still in school at the time and Cab was very popular and everybody was doing Cab Calloway so I did.

I was so enamored with the idea of being in show business so everything was bright to me. I mean, I didn't think of it as being tough and things like that.

I think a song that's got something to say. I'm not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don't last. But I like a song that tells a story and has some meat to it, you know, that means something.

I knew exactly what I was, and there was no hang-up with me. None whatsoever. The fact that the pigment of my skin maybe being lighter brown than other people of my race, maybe some of them, but you know our race has all colors.

I just went to Harvard a little while, because I graduated from Armstrong High School in Washington and then I went up there but I didn't stay that long because I went into show business.

I don't have perfect pitch, but I have relative pitch. I'm glad I don't have perfect pitch because perfect pitch can drive you crazy.

Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.

As a matter of fact they'd blacken us down. I guess there's a reason that according to what the Caucasian wanted us to look like. He wanted us to look-if we were Black, then he had his idea of what we look like.

You can't sing about love unless you know about it.

If we're talking about masculinity and tenderness, I don't look at Clinton.

If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.

I've been working for many years and I think I've managed to work with some of the best people in the business, which has been rewarding and an apprenticeship.

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.

I'm an actor and it happened to go my way that day.

I'd like to do more family dramas.

I'd like to do a romantic comedy.

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.

I would like to direct.

I think women can be as cruel as men, and men as tender as women, and vice versa.

I think that maybe that's my weakness, in that I don't know how to do it, so I just do what I do and try to do it as passionately and as well as I can.

I think every actor wants to be an FBI or cop at one point.

I think America right now is looking for somebody who appeals to every faction.

I often feel that my days in New York City, that I was here for five years, didn't get one job, went on a thousands of auditions and literally did not get a job on a soap, not a movie, not TV, not nothing, although I did do some commercials thank God.

I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

I got as much information as I could, so I wouldn't look stupid, but this is a post 9/11 world and there's only so much you can do with the FBI in terms of research.

I don't do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.

I can think of films that I'm producing right now that are extremely hard-hitting, graphic films, that nobody necessarily wants to see, graphic in terms of violence, of adult content and racial and historical subject matter.

I always ask, why can't I be just like Cary Grant or something.

Directors, producers can make you look good or make you look bad.