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" I tend to take on too many projects at the same time, but as I've always done, I will continue to shift my focus onto whatever feels most urgent in the moment. "

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" I am more than a black guy. I am a person, I'm storyteller, I'm a son, I'm a friend, so I am all those things, so it is frustrating, to a degree, to be limited by other people's perceptions of me, but at the same time, it is true that I am a black guy, and, you know, it's like I'm rooted in but not bound by. "

Justin Simien

I Am

People

Friend

" I went to a school called Chapman University, which is a wonderful film school. It was a great program, but it was very white, and it was a culture shock for me because I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I went through what they call magnet schools, so my friends were like a Benetton ad. "

Justin Simien

Friends

School

" I tend to be collaborative, and I want to hear other people's ideas. Especially with actors, I want them to feel like they can breathe life into their characters. "

" The way Hollywood and TV is, black people don't have any choice but to see ourselves in white-dominated television shows and stories and movies. "

" Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country. "

" Shows like 'Empire'... one of the most profound powerful things is that there's a gay male character who is loved. That character is going to save a lot of people's lives. Black families are confronting the idea that a gay black character can be human. "

" I have different privileges because I am a man, and I have to acknowledge that and realize that another person of color who is also a woman is having a different experience than I am. "

" Black people are experiencing a systemic disadvantage, and it goes back to slavery, which was not that long ago. "

" Everyone at a performing arts schools is weird. The weirder you were, the better. If you weren't weird in some way, they'd look at you and be like, 'Who's that square?' "

" Self-doubt is a constant companion for a chubby, gay, black boy born in the South. "

" I loved Lena Dunham's 'Girls.' "

Justin Simien

Loved

" Hip-hop isn't dead by any means, but it's not something I define my black identity with. "

" I want to make movies in every genre. "

" We get caught in our little silos and end up working against ourselves. And I think social media culture really encourages that, because you're really just shouting into a void hoping someone picks up on what you're saying. "

" For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point. "

" I often have to play a role to get what I want in my life. At the same time, I can't do that without also nourishing who I really am and being aware of my true self and the ways in which I'm not bound by my race or sexual orientation or class or country or whatever. "

" If I just wanted to put clean, perfect images of black people on the screen for an hour and a half, first of all, there are other people already doing that, and they're making a lot of money doing it. "

" Shonda Rhimes has figured it out, of getting multiracial casts on television and appealing to everybody. "

" Films with predominantly white casts can come in any form, tell any story, big or small. For black films, you have the light, fluffy rom-coms or 'Madea' movies, and then you have the black-torture awards movie. "

" I like the movies that embrace the complexity of the human condition. "

" Usually, with 'Star Trek,' you always trust the captain. The captains are always going to pull us through; the captain's always going to win. "

" Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year. "

" For me it's just, I have too many ideas, man. It's a problem, actually. "

Justin Simien

Man

Many

" I took an internship at Focus Features while I was in film school. I was really interested in how specialty movies were marketed and found their audience despite being about topics that were outside of the mainstream. "

" To surrender your ego, you have to have one first. "

" There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of being black. "

" 'Blue is the Warmest Colour' - I'm not a lesbian, I'm not French, I'm not a woman, but I saw so much of myself in those women and in those characters. I saw different parts of myself than I ever would've seen if I hadn't seen that film. "

" Everybody else was quoting 2Pac, and I was running around with Green Day in my Walkman. Racially speaking, I wasn't cool or appropriate for any group. "

" I thought I was depressed because I wasn't a writer/director. I moved into a space where I'm a writer/director, my movie is a hit at Sundance, I have a wonderful, loving boyfriend, and wow, I have financial stability. Why can't I get out of bed still? "

" I think we are aware that post-racialism isn't real, right? I mean, I hope so. I kind of joke that we're post-post-racial. "