Quotes About Stereotypes

All Americans knew was 'The Joy Luck Club' and children of dry cleaners trying to assimilate. The Asia that I was seeing was a world of people who are incredibly sophisticated, and I wanted to represent that side.

Sometimes people look at people with disabilities and there's a moment where they just feel sorry for them.

As far as a Latin explosion, I'm sorry, I'm the only Latino who's going to say it, but there is no Latin explosion. I'm sorry. Four or five top box office people do not make it an explosion, and it's disgusting to me that people will perceive it that way.

I really like birds. Everyone always wants me to say that I can't stand to go near them, just like they want Janet Leigh to confess that she can't bear to take a shower. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Oddly enough, Asians are a much smaller 'minority' than African Americans in this country. But because Asians are so successful, college admission officers don't feel sorry for them, so they are not a preferred 'minority.'

I feel sorry for girls getting caught up in it and still thinking they have to define themselves and their success by being in a relationship, straight women, straight girls, by being in a heterosexual relationship or being in any relationship, as if that's in any way a mark of what kind of successful human being you are.

When it comes to black female comedians, it's like, if you're not overweight, are you funny? There's rules, like, you can't be skinny and pretty and funny. I'm all three, sorry to break it to you.

I was sort of a sissy as a little kid.

If you want someone who is sort of still, has a bit of an edge, is older, you get Morgan Freeman. If you want someone who can carry a gun and still play a father, you get Danny Glover. My category is 'that guy who happens to be black.'

Because I'm a big guy, I was always playing the bad guy or whatever, but after I did 'The Blind Side,' where I played a father who's a really loving, likeable sort of person, a lot of those barriers were broken down. People saw me as something softer, not so much as a heavy anymore.

I don't like labels, but I do have blue eyes and I'm soulful, so what am I going to do?

Rap bores me, and all the glamour rock groups like Bon Jovi just amuse me. They obviously have a place, but they all sound like they use the same guitar player to me.

I only get compared to women, which is crazy because often the women they compare me to... we just have a similar hairstyle. Whether it's Joni Mitchell or Florence and the Machine - our music doesn't always sound anything alike. But we just all have long hair.

Sometimes when I talk, I sound like a feminist because I get really angry when I hear certain things. For instance, a lot of families don't really educate their girls much while they educate their sons to the full extent. I think that's not fair.

It's funny because if you ever ask anyone in England to try and do a Beatles accent, no one knows what they really sound like. If you ask anyone in America, they would try and give it a go. English people just know their songs.

My music confuses people because they think I will sound a certain way because I look a certain way with the dreads.

Whenever you're dealing with something that's difficult to describe, that you can't get across to someone in a sound bite, it sounds like the normal default is to pick what's easiest, and in the case of fiction written by women, fiction involving women, fiction involving any sort of relationship, the word that comes to mind is 'romance.'

Ang Lee and 'Hulk,' for instance - a movie about a guy with different-colored skin and a lot of repressed rage? Sounds like the perfect film for an Asian, to me!

As a society, we pick words that are offensive based on what we're most afraid of. We associate sounds with some dangerous idea, and right now the most dangerous thing to us are the differences between us.

Chinese players are not as naturally skilled like South American or European players, like players who learned football when they were kids. They're not good.

If you go to Canada or Los Angeles, you will get to see many South Asians there, but on screens, they are so less in number. It is abnormal not to have much South Asians on screens.

Well, it's like my movie, 'The Apostle.' Some people in the North don't get that movie. They think that, in the South, if you don't shout, you can't play one of those guys.

In South Africa, they think we're pygmies!

'South Park' movie was R. There's a place that people are not occupying, thinking that animated has to be family always, and I don't think that's true.