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" I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea. "

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

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

" People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination. "

" 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. "

" Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes. "

" The enemy is the system. And the system is made up of people, and we have a choice in that. "

" I can't put anything out that's not me. "

" We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down. "

" To me, if you can do the Wicked Witch live, you can play anybody. "

" My first job was at Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, my second job was at a pharmaceutical company in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My third job was at Palmolive. And I realized, three jobs in three years, maybe it wasn't the job. It had to be me. "

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

" 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. "

" You can't be limited by your own experience. "

" When I'm on set, I know what I want. "

" 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. "

" Our country is pathologically violent. "

" My ultimate dream was just to be an auteur. "

" You don't have to make yourself look like people expect you to look. "

" Both grandfathers fought in different wars. My mother's father fought in World War II, and then my father's father fought in Korea. And they're both these country boys, one from rural Tennessee and one from rural Louisiana - and they never went back home. "

" 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

" Filmmaking was the way I could write characters and not have to give them up to anybody. "

" Before Charlottesville, it might have been easy to dismiss the plot of 'Mudbound' as no longer relevant. Now, I feel like audiences will be more receptive to the material - and to interrogating their personal histories after watching it. "

" 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. "

" I had originally written 'Pariah' as a feature, and we shot the first act as a short film, and then we used the short as a marketing tool to fundraise for the feature. "

" I kept getting offered all this young adult stuff. I don't want to keep telling teen coming-of-age stories! "

" In an industry that's uncertain and when you're in a lot of situations that are anxiety-causing, to have someone there who has your back unconditionally and cares for you and the material and would give anything to make sure everything is OK, makes you feel so much better. It gives you a sense of security as an artist. "

" For each character, I try to understand what is driving them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You don't have to make your life look like anybody else says it should look. "