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All Quotes by author - Yance Ford

" Being nominated is such a tremendous honor. An Oscar win for me and for the 'Strong Island' team would be the cap to an incredible journey. But it would also mean that my brother will not disappear from history. "

" Black lives are too easy to take in America because we don't want to question why people are so afraid of black and brown people to begin with. And that's what I want 'Strong Island' to do. "

" Everyone in the street where I grew up was given the same message: You can be anything; you can do anything. That wasn't extraordinary; that was ordinary for us. My folks didn't believe in black exceptionalism. There's nothing exceptional about 'You can have that, too' - except when it comes to justice. You can't have that. "

" Film festivals are usually unpleasant experiences on some level. The lines are ridiculous, the crowds are ridiculous, or the schedules are impossibly arranged: 'You say that there's a film you really want to see? Try the 8 A.M. show! Oh, it's too bad you didn't get to bed until 2 A.M. the night before.' "

" Grief, for me, is a moment-to-moment experience. "

" Grief is a very complicated monster. There's no real exorcising of it. It has a different form every day. "

" I don't feel like a hero. "

" I don't think I present as gender-conforming on screen, but some people need a little extra information. "

" If I can help one family embrace their child and not displace them and throw them out, I'm happy about that. "

" If my making history makes it easier for a trans kid at home somewhere to feel more at home in their skin, then I'm so excited about that. "

" I had a list of 10 rules when we started 'Strong Island,' and one of them was, 'Yance will never appear on camera with sync sound.' "

" I have a lot of surrogate parents, but there's no one like your mother. "

" I have been gender-nonconforming my entire life. "

" I hope that audiences understand that there is a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address, that there has always been a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address. In fact, our country is built on the precariousness of black lives, the disposability of black lives. "

" I love marching bands. "

" I'm incredibly proud to be the first trans director to be nominated for an Oscar. "

" Instincts are a really important guide for any artist, but particularly filmmakers because it takes a lot to stay true to your instincts as a storyteller. "

" I remind audiences that I'm in the fortunate position to make a film about my family. "

" I think fear has been racialised. When you get someone who says 'I was afraid' of a big black guy, that's enough to say, 'Okay, not guilty,' or, 'No indictment.' It's persisted over generations, and it needs to stop. "

" It's important that people understand that 'Strong Island' is just as much about this claim of reasonable fear and our need to interrogate reasonable fear as it is about my family's grief. "

" It would be easier for people to grasp that gender, sex, and sexual orientation are different things if we had as much imagination in real life as we do when we are making our movies. "

" It would have been tough for anyone to adapt 'Push' - an amazing but wrenching novel by Sapphire - for the screen, and I think director Lee Daniels made interesting choices, particularly with Precious' fantasies. In my view, some of them work and some do not, but they are definitely provocative directorial choices. "

" I will never understand how so many young women can go out in the freezing cold wearing so little clothing. "

" I worked at 'POV' for five years before I told one person about my brother. "

" I would hate for people to think that 'Strong Island' is just about a family's grief. It is about a family's grief, yes, but it is also an interrogation of our criminal justice system. "

" Most black families went from the South to the city. My family went from the South to the city to the suburbs because they wanted their children to have the realization of the suburban lifestyle. What does it mean that that doesn't actually protect you? "

" My brother's death picked up my life and put it down somewhere else. I had an image of myself in my mind as a working artist, and when he died, all of that changed. "

" My father just believed in my mother's ability to do anything. "

" My impression is that the Academy is really sincere about moving toward a more inclusive and representative Hollywood. "

" Our blackness and how to survive being black in America was something that our parents instilled in us extraordinarily well. "

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