Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Cheo Hodari Coker

The first time that I met B.I.G. was in 1994, summer of '94 - I believe it was August. I think it was right after 'Ready to Die' came out.

My era was '90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That's my rock n' roll.

The reason I keep making so many musical metaphors with 'Luke Cage' is that I don't view it as much a television show as I do a concept album with dialogue.

It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.

Most superheroes, when you look at origin stories - before they invent their costume, they just go with what's around.

The only thing that's different about doing a superhero show is that you can have your hero do things that a normal cop in a procedural can't do. But the structure of the storytelling is universal.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

I just always feel that any black art should address our perpetual struggle for progress and freedom, period. There's no way around it. The thing is you can never predict what the next injustice is going to be. Unfortunately, it's part of being black and conscious in America.

That's the thing about TV: it gives you so much time to tell your story; it's comparable to comics.

Alfre Woodard is a powerhouse, master actor, but she's also someone that you want to interact with, someone that you want to talk to.

All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.

Bushmaster was such a great adversary, and Mustafa Shakir, just the way that he embodies him in terms of the power of the voice, the stillness, and then, at the same time, when they do get after it, when he does fight, just how kinetic he was. He just brought a great dynamic and being able to explore his history in making the character Jamaican.

As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.

Even though I've got this really brawny, masculine reputation, I'm a Shondaland Thursdays kind of guy.

If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.

The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.

'The Wire' is, by far, my favorite television show of all time. And I've always said that my aspirations for 'Luke Cage' was that it would be 'The Wire' of the Marvel television universe.

The difference between a Marvel superhero and a DC superhero is that we place Marvel superheroes in the real world that we recognize and that we know.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was when the original 'Secret Wars' came out with the debut of the black costume for Spider-Man. I remember I couldn't wait to get home to read it, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, I've been waiting for this comic to come out. I hope, God forbid, nothing happens to me before I get home to read it.'

Even though I'm not Jamaican, I've always loved Jamaican culture because, to me, it's the island of magic, it's the island of politics, of resistance.

People underestimate hip-hop the way they have sometimes underestimated comic books.

The only thing police patrol cops - in certain situations - are expert at is spotting anomalies. When you are a black person that is driving in a place that you stick out, that's all they're going to see.

For 'Luke Cage,' of course, I was familiar with Power Man and Iron Fist. I read the comics. That was really more stuff that you read for fun. It wasn't that you read either of those comics for profound moments, although they have profound moments.

When I was a critic, I reviewed Public Enemy's 'Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age' - this is back in '94 - and I called it a 'Dante-esque spiral of the hip-hop hell.' I idolized Chuck D, but I just hated that record, and I did not hold back. Chuck didn't freeze me out. Every time I met Chuck, he always treated me with the utmost respect.

If there's one thing that I've learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it's that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.

The thing that all police officers decide when they wake up in the morning is that they're going home.

Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.

Hip hop fans are obsessed, and they're geeks about hip hop. Comic book fans are also geeks, and when you can meld the two, then you open the world up to, I think, communities that will just take to each other.

The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.

Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.

You can't really say that Bushmaster or Mariah Dillard is a bigger bad, because they both do some pretty heinous things.

When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.

One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

The first 'Creed' is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

For me, hip-hop has always been black superhero music.

One of my favorite comic books of all-time is the graphic novel 'God Loves, Man Kills.'

The reason that Shaft has a dominant theme song is because James Bond has a dominant theme song.

It's important to for your kids to see themselves in their superheroes. Really, it's important for all of us.

Honestly, what 'Luke Cage' is - it's a hip-hop Western. And you have Luke Cage as the sheriff of Harlem.

I'm a hip-hop showrunner.

When you're writing about cops from the perspective of cops, that level of sarcasm about their job and how they treat people will color the writing to a certain extent.

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

'Daredevil' is haunted by Frank Miller, from the standpoint of the Frank Miller run on 'Daredevil' is so insurmountable.

Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he's just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let's not forget that he's one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.

When I was a journalist, I didn't care how many people talked to Ice Cube before I talked Ice Cube. I just knew that when I talked to Ice Cube, it was going to be different than what anybody else had done, and it was the same with any group.

Fatherhood is something that is personal to me because I didn't grow up around my father.

I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.

Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.

I just felt that Danny Rand within the Luke Cage universe... I just felt that he was going to be dope.

My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron.

To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.

All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.

Even though my approach is slightly different, the Luke Cage of 'Jessica Jones' is no stranger to the Luke Cage of Marvel's 'Luke Cage.' It's really a continuation to a certain extent. It's just got a little different flavor, but it's still the same suit.

My mom and dad met at U. Conn., and their lives couldn't have been more different in terms of their upbringing.

The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew - and he was right - that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.

The power that you have as a storyteller is to be able to tell stories that are at once entertaining but also never lose sight of what's going on in the real world.

Television has power.

I finally achieved my dream by being a TV showrunner.

I wanted Luke Cage to very much be an African American superhero rather than a superhero that happens to be black. I felt it was important to give him that cultural grounding but also show that it doesn't make him an obtuse or one-sided character.