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" There is a difference between being offended and being prejudiced and even being bigoted against. There's a difference between that and racism. "

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" One of the most powerful lessons I learned is when you make an argument in a film, you have to make sure both characters are right. "

" I talk about being a 'what' to people. Like, being gay in mainstream society is a different kind of 'what' than being black. They don't always jive. It's confusing and leads to these really awkward personal stories that have just been in me for awhile. "

" When you're part of a society where you're constantly having to define your identity and sort of negotiate with what the mainstream culture thinks you are, you have less energy and time to figure out who you are when you go home at night. "

" The thing about TV is you kind of have an endless canvas. You can always keep going. "

" 'Color-blind' comes up - people say 'Oh, I'm color-blind and therefore can't be accused of racism,' but I think that if we are going to have an honest dialogue about racism, we have to admit that people of color are having a different experience. "

" I love great prestige television, but because I make television, sometimes I don't want to, like, you know, fall into a very heavy cerebral drama. "

" The Black Lives Matter movement has spawned all kinds of activism. "

" America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country after the election of Donald Trump. "

" I see racism as institutional: the rules are different for me because I'm black. It's not necessarily someone's specific attitude against me; it's just the fact that I, as a black man, have a much harder time making an art-house movie and getting it released than a white person does about their very white point of view. That's racism. "

" It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same. "

The Right Thing

" I saw 'Beauty and the Beast' at eight years old in theatres and spent hours trying to recreate the majestic imagery of that story in a drawing notepad at home. "

" Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You watch 'Malcolm X,' and then Netflix recommends 'B.A.P.S.,' and you're like, 'What? Those movies have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but OK.' They don't recommend other historical biopics - it's 'B.A.P.S.' and 'Ghost Dad.' "

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

" 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. "

" In the press, there's this desire for the black audience to be this monolithic thing that always responds to the same stars. That's a really reductive way of looking at the black audience. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can? "

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

" I think great movies do promote conversation, great movies are honest, and great movies are sometimes polarizing. "

" As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.' "

" I think I'll always be making movies that intend to say something new. "

" It is frustrating having to walk through America having to bob and weave people's impressions of me because they see a tall black guy walking down the street. That is frustrating. "

" It occurred to me that by naming the film itself 'Dear White People,' I could tap into the burgeoning meme culture as well as make a meta-commentary about the controversies within the film. "

" If you examine any aspect of the human condition long enough, you really do have to start laughing at it. Because the business of being human is kind of ridiculous. "

" I never quite lived up to the image of the black man as I saw it growing up. I was never listening to the right music at the right time or wearing the right clothes at the right time. I was still listening to Michael Jackson, and everyone had sort of moved on to gangster rap. Alanis Morissette when everyone else was listening to En Vogue. "

" '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. "