Quotes from Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

You have to not let yourself believe you can't. Do what you can do within the framework of what you have, and don't look outside - look inside.

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

The graphic novel is a great form that can be used to marry the book format with the movie.

My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff.

If you look down a barrel of a gun... you don't forget it.

The studios didn't really take independent films seriously, till 'Sweetback' was such a financial success.

Somebody once asked me, 'Melvin, how'd you get to the top?' It was simple. Nobody would let me in at the bottom.

I have no illusions about running. I hate running. If I could feel as good as I felt at 30 without running, I wouldn't do it, but that's not the way it works! So - no pain, no gain.

I'm pretty much a loner. That's not good, bad, or indifferent.

I intend to stay dangerous.

What some folks find funny, other folks find tragic.

Directors love to do music, they've been doing that all along.

I used to be the third person in the secret jets we had - they were secret at the time - a jet bomber that flew at immense heights carrying atomic bombs.

When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously.

There is a downside to affordable technology, and that's mediocrity. I mean, just 'cause you can afford it don't mean you can do it.

I've never been to film school. I had to leave this country to make a film. All they would let me do in Hollywood was be a messenger.

I was getting my Ph.D. in Holland - I speak Dutch - for a number of years before I moved to France because I had one of those offers you couldn't turn down. They offered me to come and do my films.

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.

Me and modesty don't mix.

One day, I was sitting in a movie theater, and I said, 'What the hell? I can do better than that.'

I'm too short to play basketball and too nervous to steal.