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" Little Haley Joel Osment in 'The Sixth Sense' can see dead people. Well, I can see racist people. "

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" Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn't have a ton of heroes that you can look to. "

" The power of story and the power of a well-crafted film or television show is really all you need to speak to people. I think Hollywood is sort of catching up to that. "

" Obama was the best thing for black nerds everywhere. Finally we had a role model. Before Obama, we basically had Urkel. "

" Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing. "

" I think the lesson is that when you give black voices a platform and the opportunity to tell our story, we will tell good stories just like anybody else. "

" You can track elections by who was playing that president on 'SNL' at that time. There's the theory that the more likable or charismatic impression would help get the president elected. "

" I was a very scared child. Not, you know, not so much of life but of the demons that lurked in the dark. And horror movies terrified me. You know, I'd love watching them but then at night, I would just be up in sweats all night. "

" As kids, there's somehow the fear that these bullies can end your life if they want to. Everything is blown up, and occasionally that kind of awful thing does happen. "

" Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen. "

" I love getting cheers. I love giving scares. Anything that really works with the audience makes me happy. "

" Racism comes in many different forms. Sometimes it's subtle, and sometimes it's overt. Sometimes it's violent, and sometimes it's harmless, but it's definitely here. It's something that I think we're all guilty of, and we just have to make sure that we deal with our own personal racism in the right way. "

" In the Trump era, it's way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think, 'We don't have a racist bone in our bodies.' We have to face the racism in ourselves. "

" I think, before Obama, there was a glass ceiling. That's a big change. As a president, I think he was the best. I felt like I could trust his judgment, and he'd take a measured, empathetic approach. I don't see there ever being another Barack Obama. "

" As a black man, sometimes you can't tell if what you're seeing has underlying bigotry, or it's a normal conversation and you're being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there. "

" It was definitely during the Obama administration that talking about racism, or calling it out, suddenly seemed taboo. It seemed like talking about race was somehow summoning the evil of racism. "

" I'm a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking. "

" The way I look at it is, when you allow people to submerge themselves into a story, they will react by thinking through what it's about. That's just so much more fun and effective, I think, than a lecture. "

" There is something transformative if you're a black person cheering in a theater and turn to see a white person cheering for the same thing you are. "

" I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the 'other' category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly. "

" New York is about as cosmopolitan as it gets. It's a fairly mixed and woke town, so there weren't a lot of situations growing up where I felt like the outsider or the alien. "

" I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me. "

" I find campfire stories and urban legends are kind of the bread and butter that inspires a lot of people who are making horror and thriller. There is a nugget of truth behind these sort of cautionary tales. "

" Each one of my movies is going to be about one of these different social demons. The first one, being 'Get Out,' is about race and neglect and marginalization. "

" 'Thelma and Louise' was a pretty important film for me and still is. It's a social film about many things - gender, freedom - and it puts someone like me into the place of these protagonists. Watching that movie, you are living through the eyes of these women. "

" Part of the desire to live in a post-racial world includes the desire not to have to talk about racism, which includes a false perception that if you are talking about race, then you're perpetuating the notion of race. I reject that. "

" I want to believe in ghosts. I love ghost stories. "

" I am a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino, who takes time to figure out what his next movie is. "

" You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room. "

" It's a no-win situation with politics; it's always going to be stressful. I'm more into the comedy of life. "

" You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you. "