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" I hear a creak in my house, and I'm calling the police immediately, but at the same time, I do know that when I call them, I'm going to make sure to say, 'I'm a black guy, and this is my house.' "

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" Jill Soloway is a friend of mine. She does 'Transparent,' and she's amazingly funny and brilliant and bright. And I love her show. "

Kenya Barris

Her

Love

She

" I've been on predominantly 'white' shows before, and I had also been on predominantly 'black' shows. I would complain that when I was on a white show, they would only hire me because there was a black character or they needed a black voice. But then I would be mad if they went and hired a white dude in my position. "

" I have five kids, and people can say 'nature versus nurture,' but it is nature! Nurture has so little to do with it. I have five kids, and there are five totally different people in my house. "

" As wild and raunchy as Richard Pryor was, people related to his honesty because they found something in their life that they understood. "

" I'm a huge fan of writing for people rather than writing and then trying to wedge people in. I'd love to know who the people are before I can write for them. For me, it's a much more organic way to create characters. "

Kenya Barris

Love

Writing

" As a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in. "

" Comedy used to be a vehicle for change. Now, comedy has gotten to this quirky, nonsensical place, which I enjoy. But I do think there is room for discussion-based humor. We can tell those stories in a way that feels edifying. "

" I still believe a little bit that changing gender roles have hurt relationships. "

" Everybody - every single person - has a story. Find yours and tell it in your voice. "

" When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure. "

" I feel like money is an interesting thing when you don't come from it. "

Kenya Barris

Money

Feel

" I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor. "

" Whenever you put a family together, they may share some points of views and morals, but there are going to be differences. "

" What I did not want to be was a fad, because fads die. I had one of the George Michael Wham! neon-colored sweatshirts, and I thought it would never go out of style. Fads die. "

" My kids did not know that Obama was the first black president. I felt like I needed to tell them because I felt like, 'How could you not know that?' But for the ones who didn't know, he was basically the only president they knew. "

" As much as we want to say racism is dead, it's still rearing its ugly head constantly. "

" For me, one of the big things I really worried about a lot was nuclear war growing up. "

" My father lost a lung in a chemical accident at General Motors, and after a while, he got a settlement that sort of changed all of our lives and moved us from, what we say, 'ashy to classy' in some aspects. "

" You get a little older, and you start understanding the world in a different way and what you don't have control over and what you do have control over. "

" When I was growing up, I never saw couples fight on the family sitcoms I loved to watch. Subsequently, when tough times arose in my own relationship, I wasn't prepared and felt so isolated and alone. Marital issues weren't a part of the narrative that television told me was a 'working relationship.' "

" Writers' rooms are terrifying. You take someone whose never done this before, and this is their life's dream that is about to happen or not about to happen - that is an amazing amount of pressure to have. "

" We should be aware and constantly having conversations about the world because that's how you change it from the bigger standpoint rather than acutely trying to change things. "

" No civil rights movement has gotten anywhere without the help of white liberals. "

" 'A Different World,' for me, was in a lot of ways responsible for me going to college. I wanted to go to a black college, and I wanted to get out of Los Angeles. It's just a natural part of all of our journeys, that idea of leaving home. "

Kenya Barris

Black

World

" ABC has a general policy that you can't show images of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. "

" When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.' "

" I tried to do Kwanzaa with my family and was like, 'This sucks. What am I doing this for?' For me, I felt like I was doing it because I was trying to live up to someone else's idea of what 'black' was. "

" I set out to tell my story, which is based on my family. Dr. Cosby told his story in 'The Cosby Show.' The comparisons stop there in terms of my creation of the show. We just both happen to have black fathers at the center of it. "

" I have a 'hope for the best, expect the worst' mentality. "

" I'm doing another pilot about a black Democratic pundit who's married to a white Republican pundit. And the purpose of me wanting to do that show - and ABC sort of supported me in the way they did - is because I feel like, you know, the political system is like an old married couple. "

Kenya Barris

Black

Know