105 Quotes by Justin Simien

I find myself listening to Blood Orange and Janelle Monae and artists like that.

There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of being black.

One of the things that I love about Robert Altman's movies is that, really, a Robert Altman movie is just a bunch of short films about various people told at the same time.

I don't doubt that straight white men have identity issues and identity complexes and struggle with defining themselves.

The further away you get from being a straight white man, the less freedoms you have to figure out who you are and negotiate what you mean to society.

I think I'll always be making movies that intend to say something new.

Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country.

You know what, man, that's part and parcel of being a black person in this country: everything's harder. It just is.

Everyone at a performing arts schools is weird. The weirder you were, the better. If you weren't weird in some way, they'd look at you and be like, 'Who's that square?'