David Oyelowo Quotes

The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

'Black cinema' I don't even know what that means. It's just cinema. When Paul Thomas Anderson makes a movie, we don't just say it's 'white cinema.'

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.

Blaxploitation films were black films targeting black people. They were films made to appeal to a culture in a way that was supposed to be unfiltered.

I just hate when things get labeled as "black movies." I don't say, "Oh, this weekend, I want to see an all-white movie," or "I want to see a black movie." I just go to a movie because I saw the previews and I relate to it. I want to see it because the previews look interesting.

I feel that if you can transcend the color of your skin, with your talent, why carry that as a badge or a label?

"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

They say African Americans. I say black people. I've only been to Africa once. I've been in America all my life!

When white people eat potato chips, they're called white people. When black people eat potato chips, they're called niggas.

Corn and bean people, I'm afraid, have extremely specialized minds.

My hope is to see people of color in roles that do not emphasize race. Often times when movies are centered around people of color, they are movies where the storyline is based on some racial component. I want to see movies where people of color play more interesting, nuanced characters.

For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.

Record labels, which used to have complete control, are essentially irrelevant. The process of a band exposing itself to the world is extremely democratic and there are no barriers. Music is no longer a commodity, it’s an environment, or atmospheric element. Consumers have much more choice and you see people indulging in the specificity of their tastes dramatically more. They only bother with music they like.

I just do what I do because it feels right. Other people attach labels to that.

Making a movie about one group of people isolates the larger majority. That's what I require of the projects that I'm involved with. I would not ever make a movie strictly for Latinos.

Does people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.

The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit... People understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less... Coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.

As a storyteller, you also don't want to make people feel like they're left out, like other people who have read the book have an interior knowledge of this show, and the degree of difficulty in watching it is much higher.

It's poor judgment', said Grandpa 'to call anything by a name. We don't know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can't heave them into categories with labels and say they'll act one way or another. That'd be silly. They're people. People who do things. Yes, that's the way to put it. People who *do* things.

In the music industry it's just you're either Black or white, and this is the box you get put in.

You must never allow something that happened to you to become a morbidly treasured heirloom that you carry, show people, put back in its black velvet pouch and then tuck back into your jacket where you can keep it close to your heart.

I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me.

What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.

Part of the history of black people in the western hemisphere, in some ways, has been fleeing from this notion that they were black. So I can represent an ideal, and with that, you can demonstrate that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to run from, and that, in fact, a good deal of beauty that resides there.

Everybody underestimated the universality of the concept of a nightmare or a bad dream. Horror movies travel pretty well anyway. They're like action movies: People overseas can watch them and enjoy them, and they're not so culturally specific in terms of their references, and they can follow a good scary story.