Salim Akil

I thought I was an actor until they pointed the camera at me.

I grew up around people with a bunch of serious problems.

I always feel like, whatever job I direct, whether it be a movie or whole season of 'The Game,' I just fall in love with it.

We all want to make money and have a good life. But if your passion is writing, and you want to write a novel, I don't think you should sit in your home and wait for someone to give you the opportunity. You write it.

I was determined to make a movie - about families and a love story - that black women would be proud to see and which would depict them as being smart, loving, sensitive, sexy, and funny.

Every time I get an opportunity to do what I love to do, it's huge. It never gets old.

America has a strange relationship with its racial memory. Death has always been a constant companion of black people.

What we tend to do in our shows, especially with 'Love Is_,' is to show the humanity of characters so that people can see themselves, one, and so that other cultures can see that we have more in common than we have not in common.

Oftentimes in a marriage, you really don't have to say anything. You can sort of have a conversation without words.

Black folk have been 'the other' in shows and movies and in life for quite a long time. Not from our perspective, we're not 'the other,' but from other people's perspective we have been 'the other.'

If anyone sees anything in 'Black Lightning' that seems foreign to them, then they haven't been paying attention. This is a uniquely American experience.

Like anyone else in television, I like to explore my life experience. And I don't think African-American artists see doing shows or art about African-Americans as something 'less than.' I think maybe the industry sometimes does. We don't get as much attention, we don't get critical acclaim and so on.