Ava DuVernay Quotes

There's something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It's a reflection as opposed to an interpretation.

Even the worst book can give us something to think about.

I think perspective is a necessary, amazing thing.

I hope my pieces have an authenticity to them, but my job is to filter the world and tell a story, not to define and recreate exactly what's going on.

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.

What I want to do is create great content on television and movies. It is not my role to program only for Latinos, and you can't really assume that Hispanics only want Hispanic content. But I do think that we are severely underrepresented in television and film. And instead of complaining about not seeing ourselves, we should become film producers, directors, and writers, and tell our story.

A lot of times I don't know if I trust the director to tell that film's story. Or I think it's inappropriate for a male director to tell a female story, or a white director to tell a black story. Everyone walks away from a movie differently, because you're relating it to your own life.

I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.

What do others think they see?

When I see someone who reads something of mine and draws something out of it that's very different from my perspective, I think that's actually cool. Sometimes it's worrisome when you feel they badly misinterpret it, but it just says that they're thinking, and they're bringing their own interpretation to bear on it. [...] That's part of the wonderful thing about putting words into the world, and if I was worried about that, I couldn't be a writer.

I'm usually one of these guys analyzing what does happen and putting it in focus and context.

When I was 40, I used to wonder what people thought of me. Now I wonder what I think of them.

I wouldn't claim to know what another person is thinking. I can imagine it, but it's my interpretation, and I try to make that clear. It's my vision of what I think their life is. I don't think there are empirical truths in that regard.

So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.

I know that might sound perverse because I played Julian Assange but, honestly, I don't think it would be fair for me to judge the man. I realize that makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I was portraying him a certain way, but we were always open to the fact that this was an interpretation, not any kind of exact evidence of who the man was.

So you want another story?" Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened." Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?" Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English." Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

We look at the mountain to see the painting, then we look at the painting to see the mountain.

Once you make something you think it's awesome, but it's only after you listen to it for a few weeks then you actually get a proper perspective on it.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

We are not apt to think of the importance of events as they transpire with us, but we feel the importance of them afterwards.

I think now you see a lot more British films from the perspective of, I guess what would be considered "new" British people - people of color, Asian people. I think that's what's happening now, whereas 20 years ago it couldn't happen because it was still predominantly, "British film is about middle-class white families and what they do."

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

Good or bad is a matter of perspective. I met an immortal hunami once, a man called William Shakespeare, who wrote that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.

There's seldom as much hurry as I used to think there was.