Ava DuVernay Quotes

The biggest challenge is how to affect public attitudes and make people care.

Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world.

Working with the media remains an effective and essential way to raise issues, educate the public, and prod policy-makers and corporate leaders to change for the better.

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.

I've always been interested in how people think, how they react to challenges in their lives - what makes people tick. I've also always been passionate about social issues and causes, and I wanted to make films that addressed important issues in very human terms.

I think it can be really powerful, and one of the reasons I love making films is I do feel they can reach beyond the statistics and the numbers and the complexities of a particular issue and really highlight the humanity in a way that an article or newspaper story might not be able to do.

When I started acting, I thought everything should be issue-based and that there should be a helpline at the end of every program.

Theater has an incredible capacity to move people to social change, to address issues, to inspire social revolution.

I think that celebrities should never underestimate their power. I mean just to draw attention, because then people get involved on a personal level.

The only way you can make change is by moving someone, making them laugh, making them cry. But art has to be at the forefront of change.

[Crack epidemic] definitely has impacted folks in my family, most definitely. I think that's true for most, if not all people, regardless of color, that grew up in and around areas that were closer to the nucleus of the crack epidemic.If you look at Baltimore or D.C., Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, like, Los Angeles.

Fear-bola attacks the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking. It starts with a low-grade concern about the two health care workers diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas and slowly builds into fear of a widespread epidemic in the United States.

Filmmaking is essentially about entertainment, but it's amazing to realize that it has this other muscle that could actually help. Do you know what I mean? People permit entertainment to wash over them, but every once and a while, entertainment - and this is entertaining - also galvanizes something else and that would be a really good thing to have happen in this case.

Most of my work for the past 25 years has been devoted to organizing demonstrations, benefits and campaigns, many of which have had the effect of bringing a policy debate to public focus or moving a political agenda forward. It's become a cliché to say 'think globally and act locally,' but it works.

There are people with a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear of the unknown. They think that immigration is a danger, when really it is a solution. This is an interesting issue, because it will be a central question of our time.

I think that usually I'm just drawn to something that's different from something that I've done previously. Whatever makes me feel something. Whatever makes me excited and connected to it.

People don't see hunger in front of them so they are not directly affected. What I am doing is connecting young people to the issue

Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that's why we're all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it's actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.

When the AIDS epidemic first started there were people who said, "Well, if there weren't gays, then we wouldn't have this problem. It's got to be because of them - let it be them instead of us." But when you educate yourself about it, you can't help but realize that we're all affected by it. I think that things like that just become too daunting for people.

The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: 'Comfort me.' 'Amuse me.' 'Touch my sympathies.' 'Make me sad.' 'Make me dream.' 'Make me laugh.' 'Make me shiver.' 'Make me weep.' 'Make me think.'

There is no firm dividing line between what is an epidemic and what is not an epidemic, but I think, when you look at a map that shows widespread influenza activity in 36 states, that we regard it -- from a common-sense perspective -- as an epidemic.

The fact is five months ago this was an issue that people weren't really talking that much about. Because of the president's leadership, because he's brought it to people's attention, it's now a top issue.

I really appreciate when people use their fame and their voice for more than just self-promotion, starting a dialogue about a topic or an issue much bigger than themselves.

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.