Quotes from Lee Daniels

I've had all types of beautiful girls tell me that they ugly when they look in the mirror, as if it's someone else's reflection they see.

I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span.

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'm not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I'm here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas.

I want to live in my truth. Tell me you don't like me, and I know it. But when you don't tell me, and you work behind my back, it's a lie, and I don't know how to fight that.

I'm not Tyler Perry. I'm not Dino De Laurentis. I think it's a bit much to put one's name in front of the film. It makes me uncomfortable.

I want to go to places that are unexpected of me because people really think they have me pegged.

I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.

I went to school at Radnor High School. And I went to a liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, called Lindenwood College.

I think the father-son love story is a universal one which transcends color.

Stars make money on real movies. They make big money on real movies. To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture.

Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be.

Theater was always in the backdrop. Nursing was a way to pay the bills. I wasn't a nurse; I had a nursing agency.

I was the oldest of five children, each about a year apart, and my mother, bless her heart, had her hands full.

I want to learn. I want to stretch my muscles as a director and work under different circumstances.

I believe strongly that characters are five-dimensional, and they're complicated, and life is complicated, and people are complicated.

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.

I'm not really vegan. I'm vegan-ish. I have a piece of lamb every now and then.

I don't work with fear, and I don't work with actors that are fearful.

I like all my work equally. I look at the projects as children. I look at the experience more than the end result.

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

The ratings board is completely different when it comes to film versus the television arena.

I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting.

I wanted to make a black 'Dynasty.'