Quotes About Family

I was raised in Mississippi, in a family and a community that identified as black, and I have the stories and the experiences to go with it. One of my great-great grandfathers was killed by a gang of white Prohibition patrollers.

As a kid, I was always building things. My father had a shop in the house, and we built things - we were kind of a project family. I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema, and in cinema, you get to build so many things, or help build them.

Gandhi: My Father' is a project very close to our hearts.

When we were in D.C. my daddy used to cut his hair with a bowl. Crucial. If you're African, Haitan, Jamaican or even more poor than the people in the project, you'll know about that.

I have three adopted children with Phil, and for years I was fighting in court with him over being able to see my kids. I was always going back and forth to California, going to court, and I was never able to get a project going.

I changed my mind because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father-son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project.

The moment you have children and a mortgage you want things to work; you're locked into the human project and you want it to flourish.

I've had fun doing romantic comedies, but I just can't anymore. There's nothing fulfilling creatively, there's nowhere to grow, nothing to learn from it or for yourself. I'd rather just be home with my family or write music until that special project comes my way.

Anthropomorphism is such an interesting concept. It means projecting human thoughts and emotions onto an animal. Which implies that thoughts and feelings belong to humans alone. Of course, if you believe in evolution, or if you believe in the Bible, that's not so. Both evolution and the Bible tell us that we're part of a family.

I don't like to see projects that are all black or all white. It's how life is. I do like to make sure that I do a nice black family film; that's like keeping my home base. I do other things, but I like to always come back to a positive family film, because of all the negative influences today.

Families don't make projects for five years, they make projects for generations.

I pretty much live about 10 minutes from my office. I have two kids, and I have about 8 projects that I'm working on, so I basically just get up and go to work, and go home every night and play with my kids, so I don't really know.

On 'Paranormal Activity,' it worked to my advantage not to have much of a crew, but on a bigger movie, where you have to work with a larger group of people who basically become your second family for a few months, it can be a great experience. Even though all of my projects are small scale compared to most Hollywood productions.

I love my father, but I have worked to develop a separate and distinct identity in different projects I have worked on.

I'd always been around kids, and when you don't have kids, you have a lot more time to do things. Before I had kids, I was a lot more prolific and wrote books a lot faster.

Everyone from my high school and junior college are now doctors and lawyers. I came from that kind of environment, but I chose to go on another path, even though I did promise my parents that I would get a degree. After that, I could do anything I wanted; that was the deal.

Parents - especially step-parents - are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

After my daughter was born, I made a promise to myself to live in the moment.

When I was young, I told my parents, 'I promise you I'm going to play in the Champions League, and for my first match, I'll invite you to come and watch me play.' Luckily, I was able to do that, and I was very happy. It was a moment of pride.

When I was in third grade, I promised my mom that I would get her a pink Cadillac Escalade.

I have promised my mum that I am going to get a degree even if I turn 50.

I'd promised my older daughter Rhianna I was going to get a medal for her, and in my mind I was thinking, 'I can't let her down.'

Real is the club of my heart, and I promised my grandfather that I would play there one day. I hope that it will happen.

I promised my daughter I'd name my first restaurant after her, but now the other kids are like, 'Dad, what about us?' I'm gonna have to open four restaurants!