Quotes from Ashton Sanders

We all have to wear social masks in our daily lives to get by.

The sad reality of it is, as black artists in the industry, we still have to work 10 times harder to get our voices out there.

I think it's cool to be different. That's what cool is.

We all have perceptions or boxes that we put each other in.

Sometimes people are vulnerable. And that's fine.

I bury things in the back of my mind I don't really want to deal with.

I wanna be Mahershala Ali in my next life. He's the man. He's a really genuine guy. He's a really great guy, one of my favorite people on this planet.

My whole life has changed so much, and it's still constantly changing, but 'Moonlight' brought about a bunch of opportunities that were really surreal, from the Oscars and Golden Globes to the notoriety that it brought, to even doing things like working with Calvin Klein.

It's my job as an artist and as an actor to use this platform to make people learn and grow, to change their perspectives on how things are in whatever way I can.

For my career, I want to be able to do projects that have serious context to them or that make me grow as a person and an artist after the experience.

I'd say my heart is more in independents, but sometimes these major films come along that are pretty good, you know?

Despite everything that's going on, people need love.

Anything that's outside the standard of the average black male is looked down upon. For me, I wasn't raised playing sports. I was artistic, so that was looked down upon by people in my church, and I was teased for that growing up in school, so it goes both ways.

It's really crazy looking back on my bullies or whoever was trying to torment me or tease me, because karma is just, like, crazy.

I'm acting! And doing it for income! But it's for something that I love, and that's super rare.

I had high hopes for 'Moonlight,' just off the reaction I had while reading the script.

It's awesome that my job is to make people have reactions.

I like to have fun and be myself and express myself through how I dress.

There's so much in American history that has been hidden and shunned.

I was skinny and black and didn't play sports. And I was bullied.

I grew up doing theatre, where I was jumping in and out of plays, year round.

If you noticed, I wear high-water pants and white socks, which is inspired by the mod '60s, like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, what have you. That style of dress during that time is really, really dope to me.

I was bullied in elementary to middle school. It messed with my self esteem.

I auditioned for 'Moonlight' without knowing anything. I went in the room, and I didn't know the lines as well as I should have. I didn't know a thing about the script. I wasn't told anything. I heard it was a low-budget film, and my agent told me to do it. I was super-ignorant to it.