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" Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you. "

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" Contemporarily, we struggle with people worried about representation sometimes. It's a burden, as artists, that we take on that limits the work. It limits the characters people play. It limits the roles they want to do. "

" When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and femmes, and I felt like I was neither of those things. I'm in a turtleneck and jeans and just learning to be comfortable in that space. I realized I don't have to be a certain way. "

" There's a line that runs between everyone and their ancestors, and you cannot sever that. Maybe disassociate from those ideas but not how you are connected to them. But, you can realise how you've benefited and change how you raise your kids. "

" I want people to get from 'Pariah' that it's okay to be you and not to check a box as a parent or child. "

" Knowing what you want is not a shortcoming. Let people deal with their own anxieties. "

" For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read. "

" With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.' "

" History informs where we are and how we got here. "

" I think art breaks down otherness. "

" I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else. "

" It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are. "

" Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.' "

" I feel a lot of folks, like teenagers, can feel like outcasts. "

" I grew up in Nashville in a white suburb. We lived next to a Klan member. We didn't see hoods, but my dad knew that guy was a Grand Dragon. "

" Culture - art, music, literature - is the long game, because it's the way to change people's ideas in a more personal way. "

" Our country is pathologically violent. "

" I'm always choosing the hard things, the things that aren't easy. "

" You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life. "

" I definitely felt the desire to, like - I definitely knew there was an elsewhere. I definitely knew that, like, if I were going to be free, I needed to be away from, kind of, like, Nashville and kind of get out of the South and get out of the country. "

" I'm interested in telling stories about characters that are interesting and who are challenging in some way, one that will make you think about them afterwards. "

" I was interested with exploring the idea of who gets to be in possession of the land - how it's sometimes impossible to go back home, how family can be the thing that drags you down. "

" Actors need to know why they're saying what they're saying, more than just learning their lines. "

" To have a simultaneous global audience as an artist is more than you could ever hope for. "

" I was going to study business administration at Florida A&M, at the height of Reaganomics. "

" The only advice I can give is to surround yourself with people who are friends and people who believe in you and your material and who are going to help you take it to the next level. It doesn't mean you don't listen to criticism, but you listen to it and edit it, and you figure out what you can take. "

Surround Yourself

" If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are. "

" I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville. "

" I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before. "

" We have to create a range, and we have to let there be possibilities. And basically, by showing there are different types of people, you write down the monolith. You stop having to represent for all black people when you allow there to be different types represented. "

" I had this thing where I only wanted to work on original material, no adaptations, and obviously, that changed. I really wanted to have the resources and have the space and the time to tell stories that I've really cared about. I've kind of changed my approach, but I've gotten to do that, to tell stories that I really care about. "