Spike Lee Quotes

#1. I don't like acting; not in front of the camera.

Spike Lee

#2. I've been working with good directors - the Wachowski brothers, Spike Lee, Terry Gilliam, Mel Gibson ... I love American movies, but I love European movies, too, and I want to do both.

Monica Bellucci

#3. If you can't take a hit, you're not going to last long, that's for sure.

Spike Lee

#4. bradawl. It was just a blunt steel spike set into a handle.

Lee Child

#5. All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.

Spike Lee

#6. I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.

Spike Lee

#7. I don't think my films are going to get rid of racism or prejudice. I think the best thing my films can do is provoke discussion.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#9. As a people we do not need anyone else's stamp of approval.

Spike Lee

#10. What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real.

Spike Lee

#11. '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.

Spike Lee

#12. I don't like to use the word 'remake', I think reinterpretation is a better word. It's just a matter of respecting the source, and then trying to make your own film, and trying not to be inhibited by being so beholden to every single thing ... We respect the source, but we make changes to it.

Spike Lee

#13. 'Miracle at St. Anna.' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.

Laz Alonso

#14. I've always tried to - when I've been able to - support young artists, no matter what medium.

Spike Lee

#15. I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I'm a New York filmmaker.

Spike Lee

#16. I don't really analyze my stuff when I write. I write about stuff that I'm interested in, that I'm feeling at that particular time. When I stand back and look at the complete work, I might see themes that run through the whole film, but I'm not really conscious of it when I'm doing it.

Spike Lee

#17. Stick around long enough, you'll get some grace.

Spike Lee

#18. I guess I feel like it's a gift to meet those talented artists like George Lucas and Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Richard Kelly. Even if it's a small role, it's a gift to be working that closely with them.

Bai Ling

#19. He revolutionized music videos. Before Michael Jackson, MTV refused to play African-American artists.

Spike Lee

#20. First of all, what in this world does not revolve around money? But money is a big part of film, unlike a lot of other art forms.

Spike Lee

#21. We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

Spike Lee

#22. There's always been this hocus-pocus or magical, mystical thing associated with the making of film that sort of psyches people out and makes them think that this cannot be done; that this is a craft that cannot be learned.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#24. 'Red Hook Summer' is another chapter in my chronicles of Brooklyn.

Spike Lee

#25. As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.

Spike Lee

#26. Cause mo better makes it mo better.

Spike Lee

#27. I'll be vilified if I shoot a film in Toronto for New York. And rightfully so!

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#29. Most human beings will not stand in front of a stage and tell you about the bad things they did.

Spike Lee

#30. I've never seen black men with fine white women. They be ugly. Mugly dogs.

Spike Lee

#31. 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.

Spike Lee

#32. 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.

Spike Lee

#33. I've got "Sometimers." Sometimes I remember and sometimes I forget.

Spike Lee

#34. Sex and racism have always been tied together. Look at the thousands of black men who got lynched and castrated. The reason the Klan came into being was to protect white southern women.

Spike Lee

#35. Everything I do is always scrutinised. But that's all I'll say about that.

Spike Lee

#36. I'm from New York, and yet I've done only one film executive-produced by Spike Lee and have never done a film that Spike Lee directed. I've never done a film that Keenan Wayans has directed, or Bill Duke.

Ving Rhames

#37. The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.

Spike Lee

#38. Right now a lot of people are still choosing to go to Toronto instead of shooting in New York City, something I haven't done and something I hope I'll never have to do.

Spike Lee

#39. It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

Spike Lee

#40. I like people to look like they're floating.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#42. 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.

Spike Lee

#43. I don't know if its really important, or intelligent even, when people say to me I'm a white Spike Lee, because they said to Spike Lee you're a black Woody Allen.

Mathieu Kassovitz

#44. 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.

Spike Lee

#45. Always be mine, puppy please, puppy please.

Spike Lee

#46. I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells ... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

Tyler Perry

#47. I've been blessed with the opportunity to express the views of black people who otherwise don't have access to power and the media. I have to take advantage of that while I'm still bankable.

Spike Lee

#48. 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.

Spike Lee

#49. American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.

Spike Lee

#50. Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

Spike Lee

#51. '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.

Spike Lee

#52. Sometimes I've done small parts, like with Spike Lee, but it doesn't matter because you want to work with the director.

Monica Bellucci

#53. A spine to my films that's become more evident to me is that many are about the choices people make, and the reverberations of those choices. You go this way, or that way, and either way, there's going to be consequences.

Spike Lee

#54. My mum used to work in New York in Spike Lee's shop; she did the outfits for the video for P.M. Dawn's 'Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.'

King Krule

#55. I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. I saw 'Do The Right Thing' twice in the same night when it first came out and had long conversations with all my friends about the issues in it.

Joe Cornish

#56. I think there's a lot of hope in my work. I don't think I'm a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films. Some more than others, but there's definitely ... I think we want to convey the feeling of hope with the montage at the end.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#58. I'm surprised that Hollywood and networks have not been diverse as other industries.

Spike Lee

#59. Charly Cruz asked him if he liked Spike Lee. Yes, said Fate, although he didn't really.
"He seems Mexican," said Charly Cruz.
"Maybe," said Fate. "That's an interesting way to look at it."
"And what about Woody Allen?"
"I like him," said Fate.
"He seems Mexican too ...

Roberto Bolano

#60. Amongst black people, you have always heard it said that once a black man reaches a certain level, especially if you are an entertainer, you get a white trophy woman. I didn't make that up.

Spike Lee

#61. I consider Madonna a friend, and she sure knows how to work the publicity machine. Of course, I don't have breasts. If I did have, I'd be in the number one spot over Madonna.

Spike Lee

#62. We've gone through the names - Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that's an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black?

Spike Lee

#63. One of the great things about African-Americans is that we've always had this attitude: We make do with what we got. It comes from our ancestors being slaves.

Spike Lee

#64. 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.

Spike Lee

#65. I'm blessed, I can afford to send my children to private school.

Spike Lee

#66. I never understood the concept of showing everything in the trailer. Why go to a movie if there's no surprise? I can't do it like that.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#68. I always give the example, if you turn on the radio today, black radio, Lenny Kravitz is not black. Bob Marley wasn't black: in the beginning, only white college stations played Bob Marley.

Spike Lee

#69. Those that'll tell don't know, and those that know won't tell.

Spike Lee

#70. 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.

Spike Lee

#71. I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee. I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party.

Bobby Seale

#72. I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.

Spike Lee

#73. Spike Lee is obviously more stupid than anyone can be by accident.

Dick Armey

#74. Since the days of slavery, if you were a good singer or dancer, it was your job to perform for the master after dinner.

Spike Lee

#75. My cousin Malcolm Lee is also a filmmaker.

Spike Lee

#76. It has been my observation that parents kill more dreams than anybody.

Spike Lee

#77. I don't get tripped up in technology. I use technology as a tool. 'Oldboy' we shot Two Pro 35mm. For 'Da Blood of Jesus,' we shot digitally. We shot the new Sony F55. It's a 4K camera.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#79. 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.

Spike Lee

#80. I don't dictate, you don't dictate to Stevie Wonder, not successfully.

Spike Lee

#81. 'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.

Stephen Chbosky

#82. I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.

Ava DuVernay

#83. I miss my brother. Prince was a funny cat. Great sence of humor.

Spike Lee

#84. I'm a storyteller, and there's some genres I like. I don't think I'm ever going to do science fiction, but I want to do a musical one day. I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.

Spike Lee

#85. I think that every minority in the United States of America knows everything about the dominant culture. From the time you can think, you are bombarded with images from TV, film, magazines, newspapers.

Spike Lee

#86. I worked at Warner Bros. for a while. I was the head of the minority talent casting. It was like pre-Spike Lee and post-blaxploitation era.

Lee Daniels

#87. 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.

Spike Lee

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

Spike Lee

#89. This film [Chi-Raq]is a declaration. It's a scream. It's a warning. And I can really break it down to one scene. That's the scene where we have the eulogy and sermon that is given by the great John Cusack.

Spike Lee

#90. I got a call saying that George Lucas wanted to meet me. Of all the phone calls I've received - Oliver Stone wants to meet you; Spike Lee wants to meet you - that was the one call I never in a million years thought was going to happen.

John Ridley

#91. 'Do the Right Thing' was my first union film. I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations.

Spike Lee

#92. I think my work shows that I love women. I understand where these types of criticisms are coming from because black people have been so dogged out in the media, they're just extra sensitive.

Spike Lee

#93. Ever since the romantic comedy-drama 'She's Gotta Have It' antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups.

Lee Siegel

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

Spike Lee

#95. I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten.

Spike Lee

#96. Mike Tyson is the most complex person I've ever met in my life. I've known Mike since 1986. We're both from Brooklyn. I didn't know him growing up, but once he became heavyweight champion, I knew him then.

Spike Lee

#97. Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do.

Spike Lee

#98. 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.

Spike Lee

#99. Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.

Spike Lee

#100. I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.

Spike Lee