Top 115 Quotes & Sayings by John Ridley

I haven't tweeted once in my life, but I'm sick of hearing about it already. What once may have been the cool way of letting a hundred people know that you're about to go mow your lawn now has the feel of a used-to-be-fresh means of communicating. So yesterday, like two-way pagers. And AOL.

As an individual, and I have to say as a person of color, the thing about being an 'other' in America is I really feel like you're bilingual. I'm from a small town in Wisconsin, but even when I'm in New York and I'm working for MSNBC or CNN, you're used to being the only black person in the room.

Bigots are actually funny to me in the way that people who still wear parachute pants give me a chuckle.

I didn't know I was a good director, and I mean that sincerely. I had done a film a long time ago called 'Cold Around the Heart.' Nobody saw it, and it didn't turn out the way I wanted to.

'The Martin Show,' the 'Jamie Foxx show,' 'Living Single,' 'The Wayans Brothers,' 'Hanging with Mr. Cooper...' Some of these shows were good, some were typical television, but they facilitated a lot of work for blacks in front of as well as behind the camera. A lot of us in Hollywood thought it was the beginning of a real racial breakthrough.

Just mention the idea of warrantless wiretaps and expect to get hit up with a congressional investigation. But give somebody an avatar and a URL, and he can't tweet, post or hyperlink enough personal information about himself to as many people as possible.

Seriously, you know - I love to write. I enjoy the process; I enjoy the different processes, because writing for film and television and graphic novels is all very different. So I've never had the feeling of, 'Oh, you have to do this one thing.'

With writing, timing is everything. Being in the right place at the right time.

So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn't wear its faith on its sleeve.

If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every 'Passion of the Christ,' there's a 'Fireproof' that comes and goes with no notice.

At the risk of sounding like that old guy in 'Gran Torino' telling those 'young punks' to 'get off my lawn,' it's gotten to the point that whenever I hear somebody talking about Twitter or twittering or tweeting, it just makes my little tummy want to hurl.

Facts tend to take the punch out of a good hate rant and are therefore left best unsaid.

Republicans can be a funny bunch. They're against affirmative action, but they always seem to be able to find people of color to fill a slot just when they're most needed.

I can tell you from personal experience it gets a little tiring having to make the rounds on cable shows to explain 'what's up with black folks.'

When times are tough, people want to escape to somewhere fantastic without having to pay actual escape-to-somewhere-fantastic cash. And offering a couple of hours away from the ordinary is what the movies do best.

Bad news: Complainers are rewarded for complaining. Indicative of the victim culture in which we live, people have not only come to expect something for nothing, but are then rewarded for how loudly they can ventilate their sense of having been victims of fraud.

Obama is the New Generation and the hot light of a dawn that goes way beyond clever talk of morning in America.

Even I haven't downed enough L.A. Kool-Aid to believe that somehow Hollywood movies are an overt instrument of morality.

People of color grow up steeped in 'white' culture. The reverse is not true. And, no, listening to hip-hop on the way to work does not count as immersion.

There are some individuals who look at graphic novels as 'canon,' and they cannot change in any way, shape or form, and that's what makes them in some ways good fans.

As far as superhero stories, what's appealing is of course that aspect of wish fulfillment. I mean, you start out reading them as a kid, and a couple things jump out at you - there are heroes out there, and you wish you could run into a phone booth and change your life, or be like Peter Parker and put on a mask and become a hero.

There's no disputing that for pols, the Internet is a great way to connect with people and raise some cash and post 'Sopranos' parodies or play your opponent's macaca moments. But in a 'net root' sense, it's pretty useless for getting someone elected.

Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans 'stupid.' Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racialist' which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist.

Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism - the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has.

As a coping mechanism, or as a way to make a little hard count by shilling demons in the shadows, I try not to belittle the thought process of the conspiracy theorists. As a cocktail waitress in Vegas once schooled me: never get down on anybody else's hustle.

For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.

With comics, you don't have to worry so much about budgetary constraints. In film and television, however fanciful you want to be, someone can come up to you and go, 'Okay, this is going to cost X amount of dollars, and we only have so many days to film this.' With graphic novels, you can have that alien invasion you've always wanted to see.

Much as banks don't care where your money's coming from, the Electoral College is all 'don't ask, don't care' when it comes to votes.

Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.

Being of color in America by no means amounts to a constant barrage of negativity. However, unlike being white, being of color means one's race is a constant issue.

Conservative talkers love to throw numbers around: their ratings and their audience size. And to be sure, they have a sizable audience which numbers in the tens of millions. But having people tune in and being able to dictate their actions are two different things.

I don't think I'm alarmist. I'm more disappointed by the euphemisms in some instances than outright bigotry. Now, to me, you walk around with a Klan hat on or you've got a swastika on you arm, you just look like a dope, you know what I mean?

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.

Certainly as a kid, I grew up with Batman, Superman, whoever - they didn't need to be black for me to relate to them. But when a character like Cyborg came along, I got excited, because he looked a little bit more like me; his experiences were a little bit more like mine.

I'm John the Fourth, so I think there's a lot of things in life that have been truly handed to me by the hard work and the pain of others.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

I don't know what's hipper: to Facebook or to Twitter. I just know for me, personally, discretion never went out of style.

I've never been much of a European traveler. London once on a book tour, and Italy because that's where Ferraris are from. That's about it.

In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.'

The thing about working in Hollywood is that, at some point, you really get tired of hearing how godless you are, and how if you and the rest of the heathens in Tinsel town would put more God-centric shows on TV, people wouldn't be abandoning prime time in favor of their Bible study classes.

If there are two kinds of people in the world - DC Comics people and Marvel Comics people - what kind am I? Well, to be honest... I'm a Wildstorm kinda guy. In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I write for Wildstorm. But even if I didn't, I'd love what they do. No, seriously, I'd love their stuff.

I don't really have anything against the French except that, as an American, I've been bred to despise them with the same zeal as soccer and Renny Harlin films.

Perhaps the single most important thing for a child is to be with a loving, supportive family. And all things being equal, any child of any race should be placed with any qualified parents without restriction or special conditions.

I've no desire to start a movement, to be the first name on an open petition, or to be the poster child for disgruntled writers.

If the Olympic Games ever served a true altruistic purpose, they have long since outlived it. Yeah, the pursuit of athletic excellence, sportsmanship and international goodwill is plenty noble. But the modern Olympics are at best a vehicle for agitprop; at worst, a scandal magnet.

Oh, happy day when the enemies of ascendancy have got to confess that people of color rock.

I still have my first 'Black Lightning' that I got way back in the day, and my first 'Steel.' And I proudly display those comics, by the way. I have a lot of comics, but those are among the ones that mean the most to me.

The great thing about working with NPR - and, really, there's like a million of 'em - is all the cool stuff I get to do for the public. Meet the president. Hang out at the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Drink a $10,000 martini.

I don't want an underachiever working on my car's transmission. Why would I want someone regular sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, give me somebody who has demonstrated a capacity to excel.

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

When I go to business meetings, I'm still told way too often by some receptionist, 'The mail room is downstairs,' to believe that racial perceptions don't still exist. But I figure there are always going to be knuckleheads no matter how many of their herd get stuck in the tar pits of progress.

Fanboys are a creator's blessing and curse. If a fanboy likes you, they love you. Obsessively. If you cross them with some plot point or story direction they reject, expect to be wholly and continually eviscerated across the Internet.

I've written films that are violent. I'm not big on sitting and watching violence.

I love graphic novels - I love reading them, I enjoyed writing them, I would love to go back and do them again. I hope I'm savvy enough to do them in the right way.

Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.

There are still some people out there who believe comic books are nothing more than, well, comic books. But the true cognoscenti know graphic novels are - at their best - an amazing blend of art literature and the theater of the mind.

Why do we cling to bigotry? Because bigotry, plainly, is convenient. It is a near-effortless way to both elevate one's stature and make a pity grab in this culture of victims that we have become.

To this day, the only argument against Obama that critics can seem to come up with involves admitting he's better than them - though they certainly season it with some racism. You know, he's that lucky black man who actually appeals to the populace. He's that elitist who got himself off food stamps and into Harvard.

Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard.

Not only does Hollywood make money - it seems to make better movies during recessions. I'm sure a lot of studio executives wish we could have one every year.