Films with predominantly white casts can come in any form, tell any story, big or small. For black films, you have the light, fluffy rom-coms or 'Madea' movies, and then you have the black-torture awards movie.

It's always kind of gratifying to go back to the place that launched you and show you did good.

Part of my struggle with being gay was that a lot of my homophobia was internalized because of the cues that I was - received. I didn't see anybody like myself in the culture. RuPaul was the closest to a gay, out black man that I had growing up.

I know it's 'Dear White People,' and you can imprint all kinds of concessions about what the show might be about on the title, but my goal was never to, like, educate white people. My goal was always to create characters that you can relate to and fall in love with.

It is a fine line between making fun of the right thing and making fun of the wrong thing. And the language oftentimes is the same.

Every movie has the thing it's about, and then, deep down, it has this thing that it's really about. 'Star Wars' is not really about a space opera, action, and the galactic quest. It's about self-doubt.

I tend to take on too many projects at the same time, but as I've always done, I will continue to shift my focus onto whatever feels most urgent in the moment.

My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can?

America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country after the election of Donald Trump.

I went to a school called Chapman University, which is a wonderful film school. It was a great program, but it was very white, and it was a culture shock for me because I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I went through what they call magnet schools, so my friends were like a Benetton ad.

I love great prestige television, but because I make television, sometimes I don't want to, like, you know, fall into a very heavy cerebral drama.

Racism is over in the 'Star Trek' future, but they found a way to comment on sexism and racism in the present day in such a subversive and smart way, you know?

One of the most powerful lessons I learned is when you make an argument in a film, you have to make sure both characters are right.

I think I have a threshold for taking things too seriously.

If you examine any aspect of the human condition long enough, you really do have to start laughing at it. Because the business of being human is kind of ridiculous.

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

I took an internship at Focus Features while I was in film school. I was really interested in how specialty movies were marketed and found their audience despite being about topics that were outside of the mainstream.

We like to think of the '60s as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and a little bit of friction - no, there were all of these different groups. There was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panthers, Martin and Malcolm, but also the Whitney Youngs of the world, the Bayard Rustins of the world.

We get caught in our little silos and end up working against ourselves. And I think social media culture really encourages that, because you're really just shouting into a void hoping someone picks up on what you're saying.

When you're part of a society where you're constantly having to define your identity and sort of negotiate with what the mainstream culture thinks you are, you have less energy and time to figure out who you are when you go home at night.

Black people are experiencing a systemic disadvantage, and it goes back to slavery, which was not that long ago.

There is a difference between being offended and being prejudiced and even being bigoted against. There's a difference between that and racism.

For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point.

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.