Quotes from Ava DuVernay

There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.

The best art is realized when you can share the experience of making of it and not just the presentation of it, so that the audience is part of the creation and not just part of the consumption. Then it becomes much more full-bodied and robust.

You know, often films that are deemed positive, nobody wants to see them.

There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.

I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.

Film school was a privilege I could not afford.

I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed.

For female directors, there's a whole other set of things we have to think about, particularly when we are casting men, because there are some actors who have never been directed by a woman. Crew members, too.

I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor - and it's one that I enjoy extremely.

'Diversity' is like, 'Ugh, I have to do diversity.' I recognize and celebrate what it is, but that word, to me, is a disconnect.

I never had a desire to be a filmmaker. As a child and a teenager and in college, I was not aware of black women making films.

Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives.

As long as you're in an environment where the worth of the project isn't based on the project but what its predecessors did, it's not truly inclusive.

When I was out promoting 'Selma,' I became aware of so many other films that ought to be getting distribution. And this is a problem I can do something about because of my experience.

I'm a filmmaker to my bones.

I made my first film when I was 35, so I firmly believe that you don't have to be one thing in life. If you're doing something, and you have a desire to do something different, give it a try.

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

I financed and made my own films from the start. My path has been autonomous and independent, so I don't have any horror stories about glass ceilings and expectations and tense studio meetings.

With the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of the focus is on the protest and dissent. I'm hoping to dismantle the public notion - for folks outside of the community - of what Black Lives Matter means. It's really about saying that black lives matter: that humanity is the same when you go inside people's homes.

I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that's my thing.

I was a publicist for other people's movies.

I think good publicists are just like good mommies - always looking out, making sure folks are comfortable and making sure that folks are on time and making sure that folks are getting what they need and know what they need to do.

There's been no major motion picture released by a studio, no independent motion picture, in theaters, with King at the center, in the 50 years since these events happened, when we have biopics on all kinds of ridiculous people. And nothing on King? No cinematic representation that's meaningful and centered.

I'm making and marketing my films, by any means necessary, and enjoying life while I do so.