Quotes About Inclusivity

One of the things I did when I was in New York, which has a wonderful deaf community, is I have worked on making Broadway more accessible to deaf people.

People don't talk about small-town racism in Illinois or upstate New York. They're like, 'It's the South.' And it is. It's there. But it's everywhere. But everywhere, there are also amazing people.

We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.

You have to be a xenophile at heart to be a true New Yorker.

I think you can make fun of anything except things people can't help. They can't help their race or their sex or their age, so you ridicule their pretension or their ego instead. You can ridicule ideas - ideas don't have feelings. You can ridicule an idea that someone holds without hurting them.

If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me, or just feels a little bit out of place just trying to get into performing, you are beautiful; embrace it. You are intelligent; embrace it. You are powerful; embrace it.

It's just surreal because I get to empower other little African-American girls around the world and say that you can be a superhero, and you rock, and you can conquer the world, and you are beautiful just the way you are, and your flaws are nothing, and you're awesome.

Isn't that what we come into politics for? To say to people: 'You can do it, too - there is a chance to serve your community. There is a chance to shape it co-operatively and democratically, without fear or favour.' And that is what I tried to do.

When you can tailor your act, you want it to be about yourself but also about the people in the room and the experience you guys are having in that moment; it is really a special thing.

I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.

Gay, straight, young, older - everyone enjoys what I do.

I love how much love there is in the world of young adult and children's literature.

I'd like to encourage young adults to love themselves and others more.

Honestly, from a very young age, before I had the language, really - anywhere that I encountered binary, whether it was in clothing or in toys or in media, it always made me uncomfortable.

It was never a case of male and female when I was growing up. I played with my cousins, my friends. From a young age, I played on the local streets, just with my neighbours. The majority would be boys, but a couple would be girls, so I never really thought too hard about it.

As a young girl who was not confident in myself, I think I would tell girls of all ages that there is no one type of beauty, and looking towards one standard is the most unhealthy thing in the world.

I am happy that the young girls have a lot more choices these days and an opportunity to feel better about themselves.

Showing young girls' realistically captured bodies in ads lets young girls realise that it's okay to have dimples, stretches, rolls, etc. since we're only human.

So many people look up to pageants, including young girls and young boys. The message that I would hate to send to them is that you're only deemed worthy of a title or worthy of recognition or of success if you fit in a certain number.

It's always in our mind-set to encourage young girls to get playing. The only way we can do that is being positive off the pitch, trying to engage as much as possible.

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

For young girls to see someone who looks more like her, doing and being her. That's where my ambition and drive comes from, it's being so insanely committed to that. To achieve that, I'm doing everything I can.

I feel like it's important to talk about my health, which is fine, and my size because there are young girls who see someone like me and can validate their own existence.