Quotes About Diversity

There are so many songwriters that people don't know about. There's so many producers that people don't know about.

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

Maybe, whatever influence we have, other songwriters or women or whatever can feel like they can have a place too, I guess. Or that they don't have to do things the way that we've been taught we have to do them.

I think women gravitate toward me because I am a woman producing and songwriting, and there's none out there. There really isn't.

I enjoy acting because it is very different to songwriting and it allows me to flex a different creative muscle.

It's important to me to not stay too confined to any specific sonic space. There is something really magical about straight folk music - it's not that I don't like it, it's just that I like so much music, I hear so many different things, and I want to try more. I don't want to be confined.

Orchestras are like people. They're the sonic embodiment of their community.

I don't know, maybe my sons will be gay.

Until the '90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was 'too black, too fat, too short, and too old.' Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn't have the looks.

We've been happy to be able to work with Sony and Microsoft to have the first game that honors everyone's purchases across iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and the console platforms.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I would love to do a chick flick sometime soon, a film with strong female characters - when I say strong, I don't mean that they are changing the world, but just be real women.

I mean, so hopefully soon there's enough women and enough people of colour and enough of every group out there that feels that they get the recognition they deserve, and then we don't have to talk about it anymore.

Too bad integration didn't come sooner, because there were so many ballplayers that could have made the major leagues. That's why, you look back, and - not to take away anything from Babe Ruth or some of those other guys - they didn't play against the greatest ballplayers in the world.

Sally Gardner must drive her publishers to distraction: no sooner have they worked out how to market one brilliant book than she delivers another that is just as brilliant but totally different.

The bottom line is people are people, and the sooner we realise that, the better off things are going to be.

I just feel that sooner or later, the sheer potential of the demographics of India, which is 1.25 billion people, will eventually be very attractive to the entertainment industry.

Sooner or later they are going to live in a New York City where gay marriage is not only legal, but it's common and they don't even notice.

Sooner or later, directors in Germany will start casting without regard to where a person is from. It shouldn't matter anymore.

It's rare that you see Latin families being portrayed as intelligent, sophisticated, and powerful entities.

In the kind of films offered to me, I don't even get the role of a city-based college girl. How do I let people know I can do sophisticated, contemporary roles, too?

I love black women. I live for them. They are everything to me. I'm obsessed with them. They are sophisticated, resilient and smarter than me.

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.

You don't have to speak English to have sophisticated political opinions.