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" I'd go to lesbian parties. I felt like I wasn't hard enough to be butch, but I wasn't wearing heels and a skirt - I wasn't femme - so I felt like I was sort of invisible. "

Dee Rees

Hard

Heels

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When you choose the hard things, it takes longer than you think to get it done, and if you choose the hard thing and have a very particular way you want to do them and are uncompromising in that, then sometimes it takes even longer. "

" Our country is pathologically violent. "

" The best thing in the world is to put two characters who hate each other side by side. Or put two people who love each other far away, so they have to reach for each other with their looks. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I still want to do features, but on my own terms. "

" New York offers people the anonymity to be themselves without judgment. "

" I feel a lot of folks, like teenagers, can feel like outcasts. "

Dee Rees

Lot

Feel

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

" 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 me, 'Pariah' is very much about that inner churn. It's about this person's emotional inner life, and that's really what I wanted to bring to 'Bessie.' "

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

Dee Rees

Out

Anything

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

" 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. "

" I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville. "

Dee Rees

Family

Think

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

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

" 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. "

" There's a dearth of media around young black women and certainly a dearth of LGBT media for people of color. "

" Creatively, I just like interesting characters. So straight, gay, or whatever - like, whatever, wherever the characters are coming from or their lifestyle. "

" Shooting on film is great because it imparts discipline: What do you need to see so you're not finding it in the camera. When I'm shooting, I have the scene in mind, where I'm going to have certain lines. I learned to overlap and to shoot more than I think I need. That was the learning curve. "

" 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. "

" I'm interested in telling stories about characters that are interesting and who are challenging in some way, one that will make you think about them afterwards. "

" It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are. "

Dee Rees

You

Be Yourself

" I grew up listening to Mary J. Blige's music. When I initially met her, it was like, 'Oh, wow. I'm meeting this woman whose music was the soundtrack of my college years.' "

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

" 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. "