Quotes About Representation

His eyes widened. "You mean the symbol we use for peace began as a hate symbol against Christianity?" She nodded. "It was a visual representation of the way Nero crucified Christians upside down.

Q: Why write about slavery? Haven't we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one? A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but there's a lot of competition.

He be the persona of the peoples.

I just like to say I'm from London, I don't have any specific area I represent. I'm not representing for a small group of people. I'd like everybody to be able to relate to a nerd, because everybody's a bit nerdy. I'm more interested in that than in where they're from. I'm more interested in what people do.

One woman in a photo makes it harder for us to ignore that the men are men.

Four kids in T-shirts and jeans jam on a powwow stage. They're grinning, bouncing, fully engaged with their music, each other, and the relaxed crowd. I'm splitting fry bread with a cousin as we cheer on the band, and across the tent, a young girl reading a paperback catches my eye. In that moment, I wish for more characters like those kids in the pages of children's books. This anthology is a fulfillment of that wish.

Women's health needs to be front and center - it often isn't, but it needs to be.

If you write a lovely story about India, you're criticized for selling an exotic version of India. And if you write critically about India, you're seen as portraying it in a negative light - it also seems to be a popular way to present India, sort of mangoes and beggars.

I've had friends of mine say, like, they're tired of 'gayface,' and I was like, 'What's gayface?' They were like, 'It's the gay version of blackface: like, come in and be more effeminate.'

Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Russell Crowe - these leading men. These are the ones I grew up with. And Hugh Jackman. I love everything that these guys are doing. It's kind of been my mission to be an Asian-American version of that.

I think once 'Empire' hit, there was a lot of bad black TV that followed, because we work in the business of hit-seekers and copycats, so they're like, 'Oh this is a show about black people; this is about music, OK let's do a version of that.' And, of course, it doesn't work because it's not organic.

The version of me on the Internet, it's not me. It's one portion.

I've jokingly painted some of my favorite collectors as black men, so there's a really great portrait of David LaChapelle, the photographer - my version of him - that's in his collection.

I think all of my male characters, I suppose, in all of my films, they're not necessarily the traditional version of masculinity.

There's a reason why there's a problem with bodies, and it's because you never actually get to see any normal versions of them.

I try to be as specific as possible when saying 'Arab Muslims' because there are a lot of different Muslims. I've never really seen stories about us in America, at least where you had versions of our characters that weren't framed by violence.

I think this is the most exciting time to be alive right now. We have a black president. There are transgender movies and media out there now. Gay characters are playing non-stereotypical versions of themselves. I feel like as a society, or in television at least, we're rising up. Even in society we're rising up.

The thing about playing gods, whether you're playing Thor and Loki or Greco Roman gods or Indian gods or characters in any mythology, the reason that gods were invented was because they were basically larger versions of ourselves.

'Love, Simon' is incredibly dope, but that's one specific experience, and I would love to see more versions of that story being told or other stories that we haven't even seen yet from the LGBTQIA community.

It's going very different for citizens of Chicago to know that they have an advocate in the mayor's office - getting rid of the 'us versus them,' the lack of investment in our neighborhoods, the feeling that the only thing that matters is if you're a campaign donor.

I was in a modeling contest when I was 16. People don't think it's different, modeling versus beauty pageants, but it is. As a model, you're still an individual. When you are crowned a Miss, you are representative of a lot.

Any underrepresented audience loves to see themselves on TV, but what's more important is that we're writing about universal themes - good versus evil, can you change yourself? These themes resonate for everyone.

You know, sexism in the punk scene - or just in rock and roll in general - is so easily demonstrated by the amount of women or queer people that you see on stage versus the amount of cis males that you see on stage.

It just burns my heart that there's such a massive discrepancy in the number of male producers in the industry, versus female producers.