Keegan-Michael Key Quotes

I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want.

I think there's sometimes too much attention to a few people who do hold extreme views. Most Americans go about their lives living in communities that are increasingly multiethnic, increasingly multi-religious. And they are welcoming of people who are not like themselves. Now, I don't have rose-colored glasses about America, because I grew up in the segregated South. But I watch it every day. I think that Americans are very tolerant people.

How do I let go of Maplewood? It's like Shangri-la. It's so culturally diverse, and all my children are adopted - a transracial family. And we're not the freaks. Everybody flies their freak flag high in Maplewood!

I'm Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

The black community is my community - the LGBT community, too, and the female community. That is my community. That's me; it's who I am.

Montreal is just so multicultural and ethnic and diverse, and it's what makes us special. I say 'us' like I still live there, but I still do feel like a Montrealer.

At Afropunk, everyone can be themselves, and I think that's beautiful.

We are a diverse people, man.

The producers, the creators, and the cast, we recognize that 'Hamilton' is an inherently American story told by the definition of an American community; we are men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.

Once I was embraced by gay culture, I finally started to feel I was fitting in. I was understood by those people in a way I had never predicted or courted.

I guess I always think of myself as more of the people. I always feel like a bit of an outsider.

Today, we talk a lot about equality, but I think what most people mean by it is sameness - that everybody is the same - and they are afraid if they are not the same, they are not equal.

To play a specifically gay event for me is a backwards step. I don't want to play gay events because I don't want anybody coming to the show thinking that they're not part of the group.

When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining - I'm broadening the joining.

People who like what I do come in all shapes and sizes. Not sure what the common denominator is per se. Oh, it's meeee! But to be embraced by a progressive community means something to me and this one feels like home.

Maybe what a gay icon is, is a person who is rooted for — in other words, cheered on — by people who feel different.

I think that is something that I always like in my work - the sense of inclusion rather than the sense of otherness.

You want people to feel like they belong to something. And not be elitist. You don't want us to be elitist.

I sort of refuse to be an outsider, even though I know that I very much look like one to a lot of people, and I refuse to view myself in such terms.

I think that we should make the best of where we live and we all should be able to come back home to a place that is welcoming and represents who we are.

All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.

I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

There's a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.

As an outsider myself, I always mixed myself with different groups...I've never been afraid to go into a different space and relate to those people, because I don't have a place where I belong and that means I belong everywhere.

America's strength is that it is capable of accepting people into its communities.