Justin Simien Quotes

What does it serve any studio to not reflect the lives of people who are giving you money, who are crying out to you, 'Hey, please tell our stories.'

When I choose a role, what I'm looking for is the ability is to tell our stories. Me being a black woman, that's just a given. It's going to be a part of any role I do, making sure I tell it truthfully and nuanced and in a way that many people can relate to.

While the books I read as a child lacked diversity in the strict sense, they didn't lack values. Reading, I didn't see me externally, but I felt me - my humanity.

I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.

I think that fiction writers can write about anyone. If you are writing a character, and the only thing they are to you is their otherness, then you haven't written a character.

Since becoming aware of the need to be inclusive, I've tried to make my stories broader and more representative of our world.

I take the responsibility of playing another ethnicity very, very seriously, and I promise myself and those people that I will represent them with as much dignity and integrity as I can muster.

I can honestly say I've never thought for a second about whether a character reflects poorly on any group. All that matters to me is that the character is true to my belief in who he or she is.

I think we need to tell stories that reflect our world.

People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

In fact, some reviewers have said that as they got into the story they forgot that the protagonist is a black woman. They were moved by the story - by the people as a whole - and not by the little things.

I make films about black women and it doesn't mean that you can't see them as a black man, doesn't mean that he can't see them as a white man or she can't see them as a white woman.

I prefer to think of myself as able to represent all walks of life.

Everybody asks, 'What does 'Humans of New York' mean?' and I always say that I try to avoid putting any kind of message in the work even if it is a positive or optimistic message. The moment you do that, you're looking for certain people and words that fit into the world view you are trying to show, and it becomes preachy.

I wasn't the only person out there writing about pop culture and race, but I stayed true to my voice, and people felt attracted to that. They said it felt like they were having brunch with their best friend.

I just always want to play people. I don't want it to be necessarily that you relate to the character as female or male, but that you relate to them as a person. That's the driving force.

I am not going to say that only people of color can write people of color, because that means only white people can write white people, and that's not OK.

If I waited to write only for a Persian lesbian, I'd still be waiting. But I can write for straight white men because those are the jobs.

Let me speak for myself: I think I wanted to see people who looked like me on TV. I wanted to see people who had similar experiences as I had, growing up. There was nobody on television when I was a teenager who I could relate to.

Diversity is strength. Our cinema and our art forms need to diversify so that it tells all stories, all perspectives.

I want all types of people to look at my work and see themselves, just like I watch a Reese Witherspoon movie as a black woman and can empathize with her because we have had to internalize whiteness in that way to survive.