I have no respect for someone who lies about their sexuality. At the very least say 'no comment', just keep your personal life personal. If you're going to closet yourself, that sends a negative message.

Directing was liberating and intimidating. It's something I've always wanted to do.

I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.

Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy.

Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.

Too many of my heroes have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No. I've been offered them in the past. But the more you present yourself as someone afraid of being attacked, the more people see you as someone to attack.

I'd say I'm not sure about Christianity, but I sure do like their Christ and the lessons about turning the other cheek, about forgiveness, of yourself and others.

Have I always agreed with my Southern, military, Mormon family? Absolutely not. Have we always figured out how to get along? Yes! At the point at which politics supersedes the family and community, we've got a real problem.

My mom would watch me giving speeches on TV and she'd call and say, 'I don't know who this son is.'

Our brothers and sisters in the trans community, they showed up to every one of our marriage marches when it wasn't necessarily what they needed. So we have to be there for them, use our lessons learned in the marriage fight - how to win when it's difficult, how to change minds that are difficult to change.

How amazing is it that when a young gay or lesbian person has their first crush, no matter where they live in the country, they can imagine that all the way to marriage? When I first experienced a crush, in Texas, there was maybe a second of butterflies that were then dammed in by the fear of what that meant.

The octogenarians who have pictures of Hillary Clinton under their toilet-bowl covers - they've completely accepted me.

If you go to Paris, try to speak French. If you go to the South, try to speak Southern. Southern isn't stupid. Southern is narrative; Southern is family.

I think of the biopics I've written as exploring a more grown-up side of myself, through other characters' lives.

As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'

It's really difficult for me to sit and watch anything that I do because I always think about what's there, and what there could be to make it even better.

My problem is always the number of hours in a day, not the number of things I want to do.

There was a criticism of 'Milk' that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.

We've got the same problems any other gay couple and any other straight couple have. But it's 90 percent great. And that's better than most, I think. That's me and Tom.

When we walked out of that hospital, we had a birth certificate with our names on it that said: 'Father one and father two, Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black.' And we knew our son was not only ours in our hearts but also legally and protected that way.

We need to maybe think a little less about the science of building walls and that waste of time and energy and start to understand what is love.

I like the gray movies. I don't know if audiences always... it makes them work a little harder. And they have to work hard in 'Hoover.'

I do try to deliver a solid first draft, meaning it's my tenth or twentieth draft and then I call it 'first' and hand it in, much to the chagrin of the studio sometimes when they look at the contract and go, 'You've passed your deadline.'

Some people only look at the good stuff and some people only look at the bad stuff.