Jordan Peele

Now that the black experience isn't viewed as box-office death, people are catching up to untapped auteurs.

You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you.

I'm obsessed with giving the audience something they don't see coming.

The way I look at it is, when you allow people to submerge themselves into a story, they will react by thinking through what it's about. That's just so much more fun and effective, I think, than a lecture.

I'm a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking.

I want to believe in ghosts. I love ghost stories.

African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.

When you start making a movie, people want to know: Who's the star power? And very early, I realized there's not a lot of 26-year-old black actors who have been given the opportunity to be the lead of a film. It's, like, Michael B. Jordan, and then we're done.

As far as writing and directing, I'm very focused on the thriller genre.

I find campfire stories and urban legends are kind of the bread and butter that inspires a lot of people who are making horror and thriller. There is a nugget of truth behind these sort of cautionary tales.

I think, before Obama, there was a glass ceiling. That's a big change. As a president, I think he was the best. I felt like I could trust his judgment, and he'd take a measured, empathetic approach. I don't see there ever being another Barack Obama.

I think the majority of police are really good people and really good at their jobs, but that doesn't change the fact that with any interaction I have with them, I'm viewed as a potential threat.

I love getting cheers. I love giving scares. Anything that really works with the audience makes me happy.

It was definitely during the Obama administration that talking about racism, or calling it out, suddenly seemed taboo. It seemed like talking about race was somehow summoning the evil of racism.

I was a very scared child. Not, you know, not so much of life but of the demons that lurked in the dark. And horror movies terrified me. You know, I'd love watching them but then at night, I would just be up in sweats all night.

In the Trump era, it's way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think, 'We don't have a racist bone in our bodies.' We have to face the racism in ourselves.

Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn't have a ton of heroes that you can look to.

You can track elections by who was playing that president on 'SNL' at that time. There's the theory that the more likable or charismatic impression would help get the president elected.

Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing.

Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.