Sterling K. Brown Quotes

Plays which are universal tempt me. 'August: Osage County' is a play which is relevant to the urban Indian set up.

Specificity is what makes good storytelling, and good storytelling is what makes money, and making money is then what encourages new producers to invest in different stories about Asians.

That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.

Great art, the more specific you are, the more universal it becomes, and that's the thing that I loved about 'The Wire.'

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.

I've always thought that, in a sense, the more specific and sometimes even the smaller the world of a movie is, the more universal it is.

In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.

My hope is for a literature that raises the language above the ordinary, makes words both functional and emotional, and to resonate at the frequency of the human spirit - the skill and insight of the writer lifting the parochial novel above the level of regional concern. Making it personal, national, and universal.

We want to assist China's soft power; we want to develop a vibrant young cinema in China. The average American has no understanding whatsoever of China. We'd like to create a young generation to tell their stories on a world stage. We can make history as well as make money.

Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling.

Some Indians will come up and say that a story reminded them of something very specific to their experience. Which may or may not be the case for non-Indians.

I prefer working in good cinema, wherever it is. I like subjects that have a universal appeal.

That's why I felt so at home when I went to Africa. It didn't matter that I was halfway around the world in a foreign country, because all those elements are universal. And I think that's one thing about my work: It's universal.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

I think the name of the show, 'This American Life' - we named it that just because it seemed like it made the thing feel big. But we don't think about whether it's an American story or not. We happen to be Americans. I think for the stories to work, they have to be universal.

People have to identify with their own stories, with their own lives, so a movie belongs to a country and to a culture. Sometimes we can share, but it's very rare.

It's very difficult to balance different audiences and talk to each one without selling the others short. There is no universal literature - or, if there is, I don't know how to write it.

I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

The studios gotta start making more stuff where black folks get quality stuff. But I can't trip about that because I've been making movies for 35 years, and I've played everything from an old lady to a donkey, so I can't be on here talking about, 'They don't give us enough roles' and diversity.

A lot of British comedy feels foreign rather than feeling universal.

The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.

Audiences are more drawn in to what they can relate to, so it would be stupid not to have great Latino films for the Latino audience.

When I was writing stories about Chinese American characters in my fiction classes, I'd get comments like, 'You should consider writing more universal stories.' But anything can happen to a Chinese American girl - just as much of the canon of English literature involves white men or women.