Lena Waithe Quotes

One of the things I love about 'Rubicon' is I really recognize the New York City that they're depicting in it, having lived here for 15 years.

I started writing because I saw such a huge lack of complex stories about the inner city.

I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, north Beverly. It was cool, everybody's cool on the block.

I think people do want to relate their entertainment to what's going on in their lives. Not everything.

I have a lot of real life experience that I can draw on. And I think that shows in the characters that I play because I'm always trying to find somebody - or find characters to play that I can identify with on a personal level or relate to. And I think it makes for a little bit more of an honest portrayal.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.

There are always certain things that you tap into, your own personal experiences, and I try to base my characters on someone I know or someone I've seen.

I would love to dive into an indie film based on the streets of East Los Angeles where I grew up. If that doesn't come my way soon, I think I just might have to write it myself.

A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.

I write my songs because I've lived them.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Well, I think I was always sort of reflecting where I was and my sense of surroundings and ecology, urban or country, or foreign, living in Europe, very affected by all of that.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

There is a lot of my childhood in 'The Sandcastle Girls.'

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

I've always drawn on bits and pieces of my own life.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

The way I look at life, whatever I'm doing at that time in my life is going to be reflected in my songs, for the most part.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

'La La Land' is about the city I live in. It's about the music that I grew up playing; it's about movies that I grew up watching. Even the big spectacle of the movie feels private to me in that way.

I was portraying the family through my eyes. Everything that's happened in the strip has happened to me.