Quotes from Dustin Lance Black

Mom got very heated about the new government policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In her view it was going to allow closeted gay people into her military and she was really against it... she just assumed I agreed with her opinions.

I wrote 'Milk' for me. I wrote it for the younger version of me that had no clue that there are people who'd ever fought for my rights.

As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'

Too many of my heroes have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No. I've been offered them in the past. But the more you present yourself as someone afraid of being attacked, the more people see you as someone to attack.

Hold onto power and you lose your moral compass.

Most of my family is still active in the Mormon Church. They live in Utah and Provo and Orem and Salt Lake City.

I get emotionally attached to someone if I talk to them on the street corner for five minutes.

You know, for a long time I became almost atheist. I believed in nothing. And it was tough for me to believe in anything at all because I had believed so strongly. And I divorced myself of spirituality, I think.

For people who have fertility issues - and certainly gay men have fertility issues - there's several options for having a child and surrogacy was one of them.

Growing up Mormon, you learn how to be very, very organized, and it's a passionate group. I mean, in that way, it's prepared me very well for Hollywood.

Being right is overrated! If someone is saying that they're right about the future, that's a claim only a fool would make.

Although my mom and I had often disagreed politically and personally, she'd led our family by example, instilling in us a can-do attitude that often defied reason - an optimism many would call foolish, ignorant, and naive, but an optimism that occasionally shocked our neighbors and our world with its brazen veracity.

'Milk' had to be a financial success, following the success of 'Brokeback Mountain.' It had to make money so studios would develop other LGBT projects.

I've never encountered homophobia in casting from the studios or networks - not once, not ever. Where you encounter it is with the agents and the managers, they're the ones who have an outdated notion of the price an actor might pay if it's discovered that they're LGBTQ.

Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.

I'm my mother's son, so when it comes to altruism and understanding how to do things to benefit a person's life... the women in my life have been much better than the men.

My mom achieved so much more than the doctors said she ever would. I miss her.

Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.

I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.

It's 'When We Rise,' not 'When Gay People Rise.' It's about how everyone benefits when we lift up any one group in this country.