Salim Akil Quotes

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

"My wife asked me to marry her. But we did not jump the broom."

"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."

"There are so many slices to the African-American experience. I mean, I have the whole ghetto pedigree. My mom was in jail, I didn't have any money, and I didn't go to a fancy college. But that's not the type of story I want to tell or feel the need to tell on film."

"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."

"I always approach storytelling with the idea that the audience will get it. They understand almost better than we do, because they get to watch it from an entirely different perspective with new eyes."

"You can't protect your children from life."

"There are so many families who do not come up in a traditional household. African Americans, Latins, and, I'm sure, whites as well, but there are a lot of men missing in African American communities and in Latin communities."

"I tell my children, some people can be more talented than you. Some people can be faster, stronger, but there is never a reason for anyone to outwork you."

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

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

"I never saw a true representation - an iconic hero - for myself. It just got boring, reading about all these really powerful and heroic white guys."

"To me, Jefferson Pierce represented every side of me. I knew that I would be able to flesh him out."

"If I'm walking down the street or taking my kids trick-or-treating, and I see some young girls or boys who are dressed up like Black Lightning, that, to me, would be success."

"As an artist, I write and I do what I know and what creatively comes out of me, and I think that other artists should do the same thing."

"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."

"I know and understand the result of extreme violence in my own life, in my friends' lives, and so I know what violence really is."

"I don't think I'll ever do a show with violence where there's no consequences, 'cause I know the consequences."

"I've worked in a mortuary and seen the consequences of what guns and knives do to people."

"Jefferson Pierce is the epitome of what black men are: He loves his wife, his children, and the community."

"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.'"

"When you're young, taking a risk doesn't necessarily feel like a risk because you're young."

"I had been pulled over quite a bit by police officers, especially in Santa Monica and Culver City."