On whether a director's race can disqualify him or her from making a certain kind of film:
"When Boaz Yakin did Fresh in 1994, all of a sudden it was like, 'Who is this Jewish motherf**ker telling our stories?' He’s the Jewish motherf**ker who wrote the story, that’s who. If you got a story like that in you, tell it."
On the N-word:
"These 20-somethings can’t turn around and tell me the word n**ger is f**ked-up in Django yet still listen to Jay Z or whoever else say 'n**ger, n**ger, n**ger' throughout the music they listen to. 'Oh, that’s okay because that’s dope, that’s down, we all right with that.' Bulls**t. You can’t have it one way and not the other. It’s art — you can’t not censor one thing and try to censor the other."
On learning about the birds and the bees:
"As a kid, I spent summers on my grandfather’s sister’s farm down in Georgia, with her cows, chickens and all her kids and me running up and down dirt roads, feeling all that freedom. I saw things fu**ing from the time I was three, four years old."
On the merits of heterosexuality in the dramatic arts:
"I took a public-speaking class to help with my stuttering, and all of a sudden I found myself being part of a theater group. It was like, click — this is where I should’ve been all along. Not to mention that when I showed up, six of the nine guys were gay, so I saw all these girls, they saw me and it was like, bing! So s**t kind of changed for me in that way."
On the degradation of the English language:
"I’ll be reading scripts and the screenwriter mistakes 'your' for 'you’re.' On Twitter someone will write, 'Your an idiot,' and I’ll go, 'No, you’re an idiot,' and all my Twitterphiles will go, 'Hey, Sam Jackson, he’s the grammar police.' I’ll take that. Somebody needs to be. I mean, we have newscasters who don’t even know how to conjugate verbs, something Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow never had problems with. How the f**k did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable?"
On the Republican party:
"If Hillary Clinton decides to run, she’s going to kick their f**king asses, and those motherf**kers would rather see the country go down in flames than let the times change. But as I tell my daughter, there was a time we would be in the streets about this shit."
On his relationship with his father:
"They had called me from the hospital: 'Mr. Jackson, your father’s really ill now. If we have to take drastic measures, do you want us to keep him alive?' I said, 'Are you calling to ask if I want you to put him on life support, or are you calling to see if I’m going to be responsible for his medical bill?' They’re like, 'Well….' I said, 'He’s got a sister in Kansas City — you should call her.' Click."
On his Star Wars character, Mace Windu:
"They should figure out a way to bring my ass back from wherever I went when I fell out that window, because you know a Jedi can fall from incredible heights and not die. I’d just come back with a fake hand like Darth Vader and my purple lightsaber."
Photo: Via Playboy.