Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Audiences want to feel represented, want to be able to empathize with the characters and the stories they are seeing on the screen.

Everyone working on 'Tyrant' wants to present the world and the issues in it in an intelligent, open, fair, non-reductive kind of way. For the actors, we have to try and make these stories as truthful and compelling as possible.

In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra.

People always make these generalized statements about Hollywood, and there's all kinds of people in Hollywood.

Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.

There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't move the story forward. It just kind of cryogenically freezes us in this old racial paradigm.

If the writers all come from the same backgrounds, you are going to get the same sorts of characters. Get a broader variety of writers, and you get a bigger range of stories.

I'm Asian, and I'm an actress, and I've been doing this since I was a teenager, so if anyone understands the conversation about misrepresentation and underrepresentation, it's me. I live and breathe it; this is my life.

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.'

I just want to tell black stories.

What I find really exciting is stories from a different viewpoint.

The way that China has been described in Western narratives makes it hard to tell a story that will escape the stereotypes and allow people to perceive it fresh.

As an Asian American, I'm aware of how stereotypes can be very destructive. We've been defined by the drag queens. And yes, they exist. But we've been defined as irresponsible, flamboyant, loud, and garish. I think what we need to do - and what we haven't done as aggressively as we should have - is to depict the vast diversity of the GLBT community.

It is all too easy to draw conclusions and make sweeping judgments about millions of Muslim women based on fleeting television images. That is not right.

To try and imagine that I'm another person is always going to be hard - whether I'm writing about a truck driver or someone who is gay, who's trans, who is of a different ethnicity or creed. But it would be boring if I always had to write about myself and my limited viewpoint.

We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.

The trouble with Hollywood is that it has poisoned us. If you see a poster of a movie it is mainly the picture of a woman and a man. Always a love story. Yes. But it shouldn't be that way. It should be another (way).

Diversity in literature is, in part, about representation - who is telling the stories and who stories are told about.

We're really having a problem right now in our culture. I haven't seen one movie lately in which the story and visuals have been equally good.

The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.

Every society has a tendency to reduce it's opponents to caricatures.

A mystery is solved with a story.

Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.

You know, you find that these stories ... will turn one of us into the good guy and one of us into the bad guy. If you look at it closely or even not that closely ... it's ridiculous.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!