One of the things I really like about Ford’s films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

Jackie Robinson stole home and he’s safe.“... Nobody could hurt him again. He wouldn’t hear the name-calling. He would only hear the cheers and somehow I could fantasize my own little story about where he was and how he was doing and let him rest in peace.

There’s always the certainty that the opposite of what I might believe in might also be true.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn’t put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

You don’t work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

I don’t use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.

You know, you meet some people, and do a lot of interviews, and you come across a Buck O’Neill and you know you are going to know him for the rest of your life. The same thing happened with Curt Flood.

I don’t think that there has been a film that I’ve done that hasn’t been influenced by libraries and archives.

Like a layer on a pearl, you can’t specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl.

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can’t work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can’t really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.