Quotes About Diversity

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

I actually don't like westerns much. I like good westerns, but it isn't my preferred genre. There are all kinds of westerns: acid westerns, '70s westerns, Nicholas Ray's neurotic westerns. The ones I tend to like are nutso westerns.

My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.

I like westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels, thrillers, and I try to avoid the word 'genre' altogether. A good book is a good book.

I loved spaghetti westerns but besides these pure entertainment movies, there was also something different.

If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.

When I used to watch Westerns, I could admire the craft, but I never really loved them; they never spoke to me. Maybe because I'm first-generation American, I'm a woman, and I just didn't see myself reflected.

In the public mind, when they think of politicians, sadly they probably tend to think of men in grey suits doing work behind closed doors at Westminster. I want to get away from the idea.

One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people's hands.

When you look at Westminster you think of it as pale, male and stale and I hate that so much.

I adapt my driving style more or less to anything, from go-kart to motorbike to wet, more downforce, less downforce, Pirelli, Bridgestone, Michelin, V8, V6, whatever.

No matter what your hair looks like once it's wet, it's about embracing it and loving yourself for you and all that that entails.

You go from movies where you are wearing nice clothes and you're trying to smell good to a movie where you are in water and you are wet all day, and you are dealing with that elements, it gets rough, but it was definitely something I wanted to try.

My greatest pleasure is going out on a horrible, cold, wet January morning to pick the vegetables for our Sunday lunch, putting them in a muddy pile on the table, and then spending 45 minutes washing and preparing them. I like doing it because it's so different to what I do in the week. The same holds for cleaning the car or shining my shoes.

The cool part of being an entertainer is getting the opportunity to get your feet wet in all areas.

I used to always employ South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis - I can't admit this, well I can now, but I couldn't admit it at the time - but I didn't want wet English lads who didn't want to work in the catering trade anyway.

The thing about Memphis is that it's pleasingly off-kilter. It's a great big whack job of a city. The anti-Atlanta. You go there, and you can't believe the things people will say, the way they think, the wobbling orbits of their lives. There's an essential otherness.

I love being an American, and it's a beautiful country, but we are a bunch of whack jobs. We have got so much to learn.

I made 'Whale Rider', I saw that to be specific and authentic is to be universal, and I've continued to work in an identical way ever since.

When I made 'Whale Rider' - of course, I'm not Maori and have no business, as a white girl, telling people how to be in this movie - I started by learning the language, as best I could.

I've heard people say, 'Why do you have to do a show that's called 'Black Girls Rock'?' or 'Why is there an expression called 'black girl magic'?' You know, when you say, 'Save the dolphins,' you don't mean, 'I don't like whales.' That's just not the way it works!

Londoners say, 'We're so proud of our diversity and tolerance,' but what if that diversity ends up making us intolerant?

Being a black lesbian myself, I roll my eyes a little bit when I see black lesbian characters on shows where it's purely there for decoration. You can just hear it in the writers room... 'What if we make her a lesbian?'

Who says I don't know how to speak in English? So what if it has a Punjabi touch?