Quotes from Lee Daniels

I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.

I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think.

My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote 'The Butler' and originally wanted to do 'Empire' also as a movie.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

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.

I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.

I come from a family of servants. My father's father was a servant, and my father's father's father was a slave.

In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans.

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

I'm always workin', man. I gotta pay the light bills.

When you're paying everybody nothing, I mean, they have homes to pay for. And my movies are like putting on theater. Nicole Kidman is at craft services, and John Cusack is moving furniture; there are no egos. The only ego is the story.

I want to see movies I can walk away from and say, 'Wait, what happened there? Hold up, what did I just see? What?' and then it connects to something that you personally, unequivocally know to be truth.

I don't read the reviews, the blogs, or anything else. Instead, I feel the audience when I show the film.

I went back-to-back from 'Paperboy' to 'Butler,' literally with no break.

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

I'm always more comfortable and in a good place when I'm with friends because I know they trust me. I'm able to get great performances from people who trust me.

I'm in a great place because I trust people behind the camera as I go off, and I still go back to my day job and do film.

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 didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.

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.

When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.

When I was young, I went to a church where the lighter-skinned you were, the closer you sat to the altar.

I look at my movies; I call my movies 'the kid.' It's like I'm giving birth. I'm in the cocoon, you know?

I think it's very important that we don't sound like militants. Often what we do is we give a comment, and because it comes across with passion, then we're 'angry black people.'