Before I started to make films, I didn't give much thought to the way the characters were physically positioned in the story world.
When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.
When I played Lady Day, I took Aba onstage with me as a joke. He started singing—in tune!—and the audience loved it. Eartha Kitt, when asked what tricks her poodle did.
Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she's the book,' and she becomes a main character. I surrender the book to her.
Let's start to have a grown up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to build.
I never thought I'd be doing records a year after I started - I had no idea it would last as long as it did.
We finally sat down and asked ourselves how much of our lives we wanted to give everybody. We had just given a little too much, and it started to become a burden.
That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
Nobody gives a crap about hockey down here - nobody. I coach kids' hockey down here and you can start to see the disinterest in the game here with the kids.
We didn't really have television when I was a kid. Around 30, I discovered films and started systematically catching up. I collect interesting documentaries and films, and watch a few nights a week.
I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.
I used to play - when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.
I didn't always spell my name Bil. My parents named me Bill, but when I started drawing cartoons on the wall, they knocked the 'L' out of me.
Nothing was a style first. Everything started as an idea. A guy did something with an idea. Someone copied him. Some copied all of them and it became trendy and then it became a style.
You can learn a lot from criticism if you can take what's constructive out of it. If you read a review that starts with, 'This person is an idiot; who do they think they are?', you're not going to learn anything from that.
Anyone can make a difference, so you don't have to have it be some huge, global campaign... you can start small, and that's just as important.
I've seen an increasing willingness to hire Canadians for lead roles that shoot up here. When I started, they would always just fly in L.A. people to do the lead roles.
I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.
In walking or working your dream, arriving is a bad thing, because arriving makes you do things you said you wouldn’t do when you started.
Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect -and I don't live to be- but before you start pointing fingers... make sure you hands are clean!
