Quotes About Representation

When you watch stuff that is YA, it looks like it's been made YA. It doesn't look real.

Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.

When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.

Even when candidates have degrees from Harvard and Yale, they try to run as the candidate of the common man.

I remember I was up for the role of Jim in 'Huck Finn,' and because I went to Harvard and Yale, they didn't think I would be able to play a slave. I said, 'Oh, please.' I had to go in there and prove to them that I wasn't too intelligent to play a slave.

When I made it, I still didn't wave the flag and say, Yeah go Asian people. I do want people to know that about me, but I always felt like at least musically, let me just do what I do and be the best at it. Which is what I'm doing right now.

Yeah, but there's nobody who represents romance to me like Cary Grant.

Yeah, I'm sure there are stereotypes of Asian people.

But, yeah, as far as Asian Americans go, I hope they know they can look at me and see that they can do music on their own, within a band or just on their own, and not feel like there's any barriers. I've never felt any particular barriers myself, being who I am.

My appearance qualifies me for historic characterizations, going back to the year one.

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date.

The western has always been, for me, the bread and butter. It's the easiest place for an identifiable Native American to be able to work. But I do yearn to be known as an actor rather than a 'Native American actor.'

I'm always drawn to female stories with female protagonists, and I particularly yearn for more older actresses to take centre stage in 2018.

Obviously, the world is yearning for more diversity.

The world is yearning for more inclusion, because we're not living in 1930 where we've got X amount of superheroes and X amount of representation.

As a Korean American, I grew up yearning to see actors that looked like me. On the rare occasions I saw an Asian celebrity, I adored them unflaggingly.

'Get along, go along' is not an inspirational philosophy, and only God knows how much moral cowardice it has covered up over the years. Serve your time, collect your chits, and cash 'em in for your home state? No, I'd say we could ask for more than that from our senators.

There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.

I feel that, in India, we have films that have tackled various issues over the years, but perhaps one of the issues that we've tackled less is the issue of caste-ism. That's an issue we've more or less stayed away from... although we touched on it briefly in some films like 'Lagaan.'

I'm proud to be on the CBC and to see the management here represents both sides of every story. This is what's unique about the new CBC: you get a Kevin O'Leary on it when five years ago you wouldn't.

Contrary to what many Westerners believe, Islam has a rich tradition of secular painting in spite of its ban on images. It is only in religious rituals that the use of pictorial representation is totally prohibited.