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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" 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.' "

" 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. "

" No one's pro-police brutality. "

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" Laurence Fishburne - he's a great actor, but he dances and sings, too? He can just do everything. "

" '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. "

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" For me, Shonda Rhimes is an amazing person that I look up to. She empowered a lot of her writers to go on and do other things while, at the same time, she made sure she kept her stamp on those things and grew her business. "

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

" I'm not for having to support everything that's black, because I definitely don't. But I do feel like it is imperative for us to see that we are not a monolithic people. "

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" I think that, for so much of our matriculation through American society, black people sort of feel like outsiders. "

" And I feel like, as a black man within black culture, I know very well firsthand - as do my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents - we're used to things not going our way. "

" I know a lot for me, personally, the best moments have come from watching my kids have an experience I never thought about as a kid but then remembered as a parent. "

Kenya Barris

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" 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. "

" The small moments I've had to talk with President Obama, I've told him, 'I get it.' His presidency was in some ways almost overshadowed by the fact that he was the first black president. "

" It's hard to take a stand. You're not going to make everybody happy. "

" If Adam Sandler does a bad movie, he doesn't bring down the whole white race. But if Tyler Perry does, it's like, 'See what you guys do?' and that type of thing. "

" I would say any creative person has that: you can't just force a topic. Whether you're a painter, you want to do a cartoon. Anything. Something may come up that's not your style or suited to what you are working on at the moment. So you file it away and hopefully find a place for it. "

" I wanted to do a show about a family that is absolutely black. Because as Du Bois has shown, we do have to live a double consciousness every day in the world. We have to walk our path and walk the mainstream path, and there's never really been a show that's talked about what that's like. "

" I want to make sure I don't leave any money for my kids, so I'm going to spend it all on clothes. "

" I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular. "

" You can have good times with anyone, but it's really different and much more interesting when you look at how you get through the bad times with someone. "

" Honestly, I regret not having spanked my kids. "

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

" I really want to do what 'Veep' did. 'Veep,' in a very comical way, gave us a look inside the political machine, but I want to do it for the average American family. "

" Most importantly, I want my kids to be happy. You're only as happy as your saddest kid. "

" Of all the 'Black-ish' characters, Zoey is most like my daughter, who goes to U.S.C. "

" Actors are magical people. They can take words you wrote and say them in a way that, although you thought the line was good when you wrote it, it's fantastic when it comes out of their mouth. "

" There's never really been a true apology for slavery. "

" For me, it was important to keep my name in 'mainstream Hollywood.' "

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