Quotes About Representation

I think the mainstream gaming industry has a very narrow focus on the young male audience. There are plenty of other people out there who enjoy playing games, but if you walk into most game stores, there's nothing on the shelf for them. I mean, imagine if you could only buy cheeseburgers and nothing but cheeseburgers in every restaurant?

We are going to do extensive market research because it is hard for black women to go into stores and get clothes that fit the way they should.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.

I can literally count on one hand how many slave stories have gotten notoriety over the past few years.

There are literally hundreds of stories about women of color that haven't been told that are amazing, fantastic, better than anything else.

Black girl stories aren't just for black girls: they're for everybody.

I would like to see more female stories out there, particularly older female stories.

'Crazy Rich Asians' has been compared to 'Black Panther,' but I feel like that's a false equivalency. The idea that there's only this film for Asians and that film for African Americans - it's so binary. I don't think it's like that at all. There should be and will be many films and many stories. Hopefully this just opens the floodgates.

I don't set out to write female lead shows, necessarily. I like deeply flawed characters. When they come to me, or when I'm introduced to them, I follow the stories and the people, rather than setting out to do a female lead thing.

There's definitely stories I would like to tell; I'd like to see more films focusing on women's lives.

I started writing because I saw such a huge lack of complex stories about the inner city.

I'm ready to take the world by storm and have them look at me and say, 'Deaf people can dance.'

I remember trying to turn one of my Barbies into Storm, and I melted her hair off.

When it comes to modeling, I always feel like my body is a myth or a story that is told by other people, and no one knows what my body really looks like.

In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.

I think it's very refreshing to see women in cinema having strength and their own independent storyline.

This character I play on 'OITNB' is an antagonist in a Black Lives Matter storyline, but you need antagonists in order to tell those stories.

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

I'm not representing anyone - not Israelis, not Palestinians - I'm just a storyteller trying to raise more questions than give answers.

As long as I'm making something from my voice, from my perspective there will be Asian American content because I am the storyteller.

We know there needs to be diversity in storytellers telling their own stories. I think there's a beautiful forward movement in that direction with McQueen telling '12 Years A Slave,' with Coogler telling 'Fruitvale,' and with Daniels telling 'The Butler.'

I think all Latino actors want to be storytellers first. I want to be an actor first, and then I want to be Latina.

We have privilege in our hands as storytellers. We need to tell stories that reflect our world.

I formed this thing called the Half Foundation, and what I tried to do is quantify hiring practices in Hollywood. Half the population is women, so half of the storytellers should be women. Fifty percent of all the directors in my company are women, and it will forever be that way.