Dede Gardner Quotes

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.

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

I do think we have a responsibility to be aware of the stories we're telling and how those stories will be interpreted and what sorts of value systems we're celebrating.

I think when you look at the diversity of the readership, all the different people who love comics, I want comics to reflect the real world, and I think Marvel does a good job of trying to do that, but I don't think there's ever an end point when it comes to creating diversity and creating stories that people can relate to.

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

But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.

I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.

For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity.

Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.

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

I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.

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

I think we all have a responsibility to tell good stories.

Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.

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.

If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.

My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.

The one who tells the stories rules.

It's important to tell the story you're telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity - or it might not.

Black girl stories aren't just for black girls: they're for everybody.

I am not a Somali representative. I am not a Muslim representative. I am not a millennial representative. I am not a woman representative. I am a representative who happens to have all of these marginalized identities and can understand the intersectionality of all of them in a very unique way.

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.'

It is very, very important that people understand that you can tell different kinds of stories, and they do, related to gay and lesbian issues - especially when you know the people behind them.