Quotes from Jordan Peele

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.

I want to produce untapped voices, find people and help them get their platform.

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

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

I was raised that emotion was a good thing.

Race is a universal flaw in humanity. So yes, I've been in many situations where I've felt like the outsider because of the color of my skin.

We go to the theater to be entertained, but if what is left after you watch the movie is a sort of eye-opening perspective on some social issues, then it can be a really powerful piece of art.

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.

Part of what horror is, is taking risks and going somewhere that people think you're not supposed to be able to go, in the name of expressing real-life fears.

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 define 'social thriller' as thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society.

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.

For me, the social thriller is the thriller in which the fears, the horrors, and the thrills are coming from society. They're coming from the way humans interact.

African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.

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.

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.

'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.

I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.

I'm a bigger fan of my directing than in acting. Acting is just harder. You know, not harder, per se, because directing is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But it's harder to enjoy my work as an actor, you know.

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.

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

When I talk about movies like 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Stepford Wives,' I really noticed that these movies were able to address fears surround the women's lib movement in a way that was engaging, not preachy, but fun.