Ayanna Pressley Quotes

Let me be abundantly clear: I am black, and I am a woman, and I embrace both of those facts.

I'm a woman and a lesbian and a feminist and a Jew and so many other things, and those identities are a source of pride and strength for me.

We come from a very mixed family. We're a bunch of different races, my family. So it's very normal for us. I don't know why we're accepted. Are all of us accepted or just me?

I'm black, and I'm human. I'm a woman, and I'm human. I believe in God, and I am human.

Yes, I'm a proud Latina woman, but before that - before the color of my skin, my accent, anything - I'm an actress, singer and dancer. I'm something bigger than just my background.

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.

I hope that every film I make has something to offer in the area of making people feel either vindicated or different in terms of who they are.

One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

I am a Cajun Baby in a Texas girl, an all-American woman and a global goddess.

I have to say, as a young woman of color, and this may sound controversial, in sci-fi, anything is possible. In sci-fi I can belong to the military. In sci-fi I can have an interracial love affair; I can be a revolutionary.

I'm Italian and Spanish and Jewish. I'm 100 different things meshed into one. I think that shows girls that uniqueness is beautiful. They can look at me on a magazine cover and see me in a movie and say that they have someone they can relate to.

My whole life is an interracial relationship! It's inescapable. I am who I am.

For me, I actively look for projects that showcase people of color.

I don't think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player - he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I'm an artist who happens to be Latin.

I did not come into Parliament to be a Muslim MP. And I have never set myself up as a Muslim spokesperson or community leader. Just as ordinary citizens have multiple identities, so do MPs.

We owe it to the audience to put more characters onscreen that reflect them and that speak to issues of race and gender as well as to a character's sexual preference.

I am a black woman, last time I checked.

Make a choice: continue living your life feeling muddled in this abyss of self-misunderstanding, or you find your identity independent of it. You push for colour-blind casting; you draw your own box. You introduce yourself as who you are, not what colour your parents happen to be.

I grew up looking for myself onscreen and never could find myself. And I believe that I am supposed to be Toula to show people that it's O.K. to be different.

I'm pan-Latino, or whatever that phrase is. It's not a sexy phrase, but it is a sexy, cool thing. That's how I feel.

I perform at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where my race and gender are rarely pointed out.

My life's not about being gay - although one could argue I'm pretty professionally gay - but that's not how I experience life. Being gay is a profound part of who I am, but it isn't all of who I am.

I am a black woman, and I'm proud of that, but as a showrunner, I want to think about what makes me unique beyond my race.

I love my blackness... I love my queerness.