Lee Daniels

“If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.”

“My kids tell me to Instagram, so I do that. I have a few thousand followers.”

“I've met Shonda Rhimes a few times, and certainly she's an inspiration for me in television.”

“I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.”

“My mission is to let black kids know that their dreams can happen.”

“I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.”

“What attracts me to material are characters that I know - characters that I know people don't know but I know - and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen.”

“That's the gift 'Precious' has given me. You really think you're telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we're all Precious.”

“Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.”

“I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.”

“I see the world from a very specific perspective. It is how I grew up. It is what I am proud of, and I vocalize it. And for those who have not experienced my experience, it is odd, and it's not mainstream.”

“I definitely caught the acting bug, but that lasted for about two seconds when I found my way to L.A. and found that my talents were better suited behind the cameras.”

“I believe in life that you know that everything prepares you for the next thing - whether it's a hit, whether it's not a hit, whether it's a... your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next.”

“I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it.”

“Most actors want the audience to like them, and that leads to bad acting.”

“My mom had five kids. And she came home after working three jobs, and I'd rub her feet. We'd all rub her feet. We were lucky to get any time with her.”

“Most of my friends are dead. I watched friends die in my arms at 5, 6, 8. When I grew up, the rest of my friends died of AIDS.”

“I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.”

“'Empire' was a very traumatic experience for me. It was very schizophrenic, and it wasn't what I expected it to be.”

“Some of my friends don't have a cell phone. Patti LaBelle doesn't have a cell phone.”