Quotes from Melvin Van Peebles

With 'Sweetback,' I just put it together a little bit at a time. I didn't do it on anybody's grant. I did it like any other young executive - by cheating and stealing!

The artistic world is one of high nuance.

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.

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-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody.

It wasn't really me who invented rap. I stole the idea from Aristide Bruant.

I graduated from college when I was 20. To get enough money to finish college, I went into the ROTC, and I was an officer in the Air Force before I could buy a drink.

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 caricatures which became known as blaxploitation.

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 sky.

I work from a subjective palette.

Over time, you accumulate a lot of life material.

Our minds are not our friends when they realize we have work to do - they're our enemies.

Hollywood desires money but they could not stand the political content.

I didn't even know I had a legacy.