Ava DuVernay

I think that women definitely have a special bond as friends that is hard to describe to men, and we don't often see that portrayed narratively.

I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.

As long as you're in an environment where the worth of the project isn't based on the project but what its predecessors did, it's not truly inclusive.

When I'm marketing a film, whether its mine or someone else's, I work with a great deal of strategy and elbow grease until the job is done.

We're told that independent film lovers... folks that are used to watching art house films, won't come out and see a film with black people in it - I've been told that in rooms, big rooms, studio rooms, and I know that's not true.

I just don't think there's a lot of support for the woman's voice in cinema, and it becomes really difficult to raise that money and start again every time.

I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed.

I don't understand the iPhone. I just don't get it. Don't ya'll have to write serious emails throughout the day? How can you possibly manage detailed missives on a phone with no keys?

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

If you're doing something outside of dominant culture, there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

I didn't start out thinking that I could ever make films. I started out being a film lover, loving films, and wanting to have a job that put me close to them and close to filmmakers and close to film sets.

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

Film school was a privilege I could not afford.

I make films about black women and it doesn't mean that you can't see them as a black man, doesn't mean that he can't see them as a white man or she can't see them as a white woman.

'Diversity' is like, 'Ugh, I have to do diversity.' I recognize and celebrate what it is, but that word, to me, is a disconnect.

Today, when you look at social media, you see that the narrative can be overtaken by people just from Twitter and Instagram. I know when Ferguson was going down those first few nights, I was watching feeds on the ground on Twitter, not CNN.

'Queen Sugar' is a drama about family. It's something that allows us to be ourselves and see the ways that we interact with our own families.

I'm interested in seeing artists whom I respect who are very focused on the Black Lives Matter moment, bringing that into storytelling in a way that really amplifies the beauty and the humanity of people of color, and does it without having to wave a big sign that says, 'This is what we're doing.'