Melvin Van Peebles

“What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatur...”

“When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat.”

“The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-Am...”

“As a navigator, I started studying astronomy because sometimes you're not able to use the equipment, so you'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, figuring out what you were seeing in the sk...”

“My life and career is defined by the constant pursuit of new forms of culture and self-expression.”

“In the morning, I get the paper. I look in the obituary column. If I don't see myself in there, I get up.”

“Whitey is uptight about offending blacks without really knowing what offends blacks.”

“Before me, music soundtracks were sort of afterthoughts.”

“I went to a number of schools when I was a kid on the south side of Chicago.”

“If I had to find one characteristic that is most symbolic of me, I think I am tenacious.”

“A bumblebee can't fly. He's aerodynamically unsound. But he doesn't know that.”