I didn't dream about being a director. I didn't know I wanted to do something with film until the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

I didn't plan to be a director until I was 35. For years I wanted to do anything but!

I think black people have to be in control of their own image because film is a powerful medium. We can't just sit back and let other people define our existence.

I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961.

My friends love to tease me about the fact that I won't be able to drive until I'm a sophomore in college.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.