Don't let a culture or society's rules define who you are; you define who you are.

There are important differences that mean we appreciate each other, not tolerate each other. Race creates this idea that there's this massive difference. So when you use race as a means to explore politics, it's a very interesting way of looking at difference, yet similarities.

I'm a girl, and I celebrate being a girl, and it was really important to me to celebrate the beauty that I could create in a movie like the one I did, aesthetically, in terms of the costumes and the production design. I wanted something big and lush and beautiful and unashamedly feminine.

As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.

Don't take no as a full stop, treat it like a comma.

When you're in political times, you want to reflect those political times, and sometimes going back to our past is the best way to look at our present.

I was lucky enough to date my first love for five years. We had a very romantic, very dramatic teenage love affair. And it has impacted me because I have married a man who is simply the grownup version of my first love. So, I believe my first love was just preparing me for the man I'm married to today. And it has also impacted the way I write, because there will always be a love story in every movie I write. Always! I think having a positive first love experience before the heartbreak made me a more confident in who I am, a more confident female today.