Quotes About Representation

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

There are a lot of problems with democracy. We need to think about how to find the people most qualified for the job.

I certainly hope that we will get more women in power, when it comes to executives and producers and directors, because the problem is not a shortage of females who are qualified to do the job. It's just that women are not favoured or chosen.

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I'm British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that's what an American can look like as well.

If you are a player and you don't really retire by yourself there should still be an opportunity to qualify for the national team.

Whenever you have a character in which one of his defining qualities is his sexuality, it's always challenging, because you don't want to bring in someone who's going to play that in a phony way.

As young people, you want to see people who in some way look like you to some degree, because it makes it a little easier for you to aspire to take on the qualities of those people.

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to.

There's not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have to do a little bit extra. Because the percentage of us playing this position, which people didn't want us to play... is low, so we do a little extra.

The main character is always, you know, this blond-haired, blue-eyed guy who's the high school quarterback or the star of the basketball team. That's all I wanted to be, really, truly. I definitely was not that.

Look at films like 'Raazi,' 'Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi' and 'Padmaavat'... women in our film industry have changed the whole scenario. They are no less than our male actors.

Will isn't a screaming queen - that's Jack's part. They needed someone to play the part for America. It's just not the same as Britain. To have a gay character as a lead is risky.

Today is indeed an historic occasion when as a first chair-in-office woman I hand over to another woman chair in office, your Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in the presence of a woman head of the Commonwealth, Her Royal Highness, Her Majesty the Queen of England.

Back in high school, I didn't ever see a Muslim homecoming king or queen - there was never even anyone nominated. It just seemed for a lot of those events, Muslim kids were not being included, and it was probably our fault too - no one was going for it, but no one was trying to push us to do it, you know?

People are not happy with women in actual power, yet we seem to be happy to take women on as figureheads, objects, like queens. It's a powerful yet politically powerless role.

'2 Dope Queens,' it was just a way for us to showcase female comedians, showcase comedians of color, showcase LGBT comedians, and shake up the landscape and be like, 'Hey, there is more than just what is out there.'

I just want to be a shining leader for the LGBTQIA-plus community. Drag queens have always been the leaders of the community.

In the gay community there are not very many Jewish drag queens. I've always found that funny because there are a lot of Jewish gay people out there, so why aren't there more Jewish drag queens?

Not only does the title 'We're Here' highlight the fact that me, Shangela, and Eureka are here, but we as a queer community, we were already here. We were already existing in your space before these drag queens showed up with a big purse bus.

There is no separation between the black community and the LGBT community. As a black, queer woman myself, I often have to assert, right, that it's not one or the other but that I am all of these things.

We understand that, in our communities, black trans folk, gender-nonconforming folk, black queer folk, black women, black disabled folk - we have been leading movements for a long time, but we have been erased from the official narrative.

The queer community deserves a happy ending just as much as anybody else.

My films might have been queer - because I was - but they were not gay.