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" 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. "
Dee Rees
White
Dragon
Lived
Related Quotes:
" I like 'Paris is Burning' by Jennie Livington. "
Dee Rees
Burning
Paris
Like
" 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. "
Dee Rees
People
You
Create
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Me
Interesting
Character
" 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.' "
Dee Rees
People
Funny
Time
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Weird
Books
Watch
" I can't put anything out that's not me. "
Dee Rees
Me
Out
Anything
" Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you. "
Dee Rees
Saying
You
Room
" The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that. "
Dee Rees
Enemy
System
Up
" Art makes you see people as individual, unique human beings. Art, in that way, allows us to see each other in particulate, as opposed to in aggregate. "
Dee Rees
Way
People
Art
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Play
People
Struggle
" Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to. "
Dee Rees
Tension
Identity
Yourself
" You don't get to hand footnotes to the audience or explain what you were trying to do and what it's supposed to be. Everything has to be on the screen, and it has to be clear. "
Dee Rees
Audience
Trying
You
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Yourself
You
Surround Yourself
" In some communities it is - like, for me, coming out with my parents, they were not accepting; they were not understanding. So it depends. For kids in New York and L.A., maybe it's different, but for kids in Iowa, for kids in Tennessee, it's still something that's not really talked about. "
Dee Rees
New York
Parents
Me
" I've been around many different lives, many different voices. It was amazing material for a writer. "
Dee Rees
Amazing
Voices
Writer
" I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I found philosophy and how I'd understand the world. "
Dee Rees
Short
Philosophy
Poetry
" For kids who are struggling, who are of faith, just reconciling yourself to the fact that God loves you, accepts you for who you are, is a big step in the healing, especially when your biological family is unaccepting of you. "
Dee Rees
Family
God
Step
" My dad was a cop, you know, and I grew up three houses down from people who used Confederate flags as curtains. "
Dee Rees
Used
You
Know
" When I first came out, holidays were hard. I reached a point where I didn't go home anymore. I constructed my own, kind of like, family group around Christmas. "
Dee Rees
Home
Christmas
Family
" Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.' "
Dee Rees
Up
Want
Hold
" Knowing what you want is not a shortcoming. Let people deal with their own anxieties. "
Dee Rees
People
Deal
Knowing
" I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else. "
Dee Rees
Direct
Always
Going
" There's a lot of power in saying no to big things that you don't want to do in order to say yes to the kind of things that really inspire you. "
Dee Rees
Saying
Inspire
Say
" As long as you tell the best story possible, you can trust that people will be able to connect to it. "
Dee Rees
People
Trust
You
" Our country is pathologically violent. "
Dee Rees
Violent
Our
Country
" My ultimate dream was just to be an auteur. "
Dee Rees
Dream
Just
Ultimate
" Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes. "
Dee Rees
Roll
Stories
People
" Actors need to know why they're saying what they're saying, more than just learning their lines. "
Dee Rees
Learning
More
Saying
" To have a simultaneous global audience as an artist is more than you could ever hope for. "
Dee Rees
You
Artist
Audience
" 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. "
Dee Rees
Country
Nashville
Desire