Top 35 Spike Lee Quotes

A lot of times, we censor ourselves before the censor even gets there.

I don’t think I’m a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films.

’25th Hour,’ like a lot of my films, takes place in New York City. I’ve been very fortunate to make films in the city that I live. I mean, it’s great going home at night instead of being on location.

People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.

‘She’s Gotta Have It’ was shot in twelve days and two six-day weeks.

A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn’t intend to be there.

What’s the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real.

‘Red Hook Summer’ is another chapter in my chronicles of Brooklyn.

For me, I believe in God, God is real.

‘She’s Gotta Have It’ and ‘School Daze,’ I really didn’t know what I was doing. And the biggest indicator of that was the acting. ‘Do the Right Thing’ was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they’re killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We’d not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.

I’m blessed, I can afford to send my children to private school.

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated.

We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it’s not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts.

I don’t like acting; not in front of the camera.

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it’s not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.

Making films has got to be one of the hardest endeavors known to humankind.

I’m very careful about how I portray violence in my films. I do believe that violence, especially violent video games, are not a good thing for young kids.

I knew I was never going to play professional sport, but I loved playing and I went to all the games I could afford to.

People sometimes forget all the films that we’ve done. They remember the likes of ‘Malcolm X’ and ‘Do the Right Thing.’ But I’ve been working since 1986. From the beginning, I was determined to not just be a flash in the pan. I’ve got to keep up with Woody Allen. He’s lapping me.

People think I’m this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage.

I respect the audience’s intelligence a lot, and that’s why I don’t try to go for the lowest common denominator.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

And one thing Hollywood does well is sequels.

I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.

There’s a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we’ve arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.

When I went to school, you had to take art, you had to play an instrument. You had to play an instrument. But it’s all degraded since then. I do not know what kind of nation we are that is cutting art, music, and gym out of the public-school curriculum.

My cousin Malcolm Lee is also a filmmaker.

I am very fortunate I can send my kids to private school, but everybody does not have the money. If you cannot get your kid in a good school today, your kids are going to be behind the eight ball.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

I get offered to do stuff where the money’s nice but it’s not something I want to do – I get offered a lot of commercials too.

Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed, or black people have been portrayed, in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.

I used the principles of Kickstarter to make ‘She’s Gotta Have It.’ We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn’t have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.

You have to do the research. If you don’t know about something, then you ask the right people who do.

My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave, yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children’s education.