Dee Rees

It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are. ”

With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.' ”

For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read. ”

You can't be limited by your own experience. ”

I was never physically abused, but when I came out to my parents late in life, when I was 27, they definitely had an intervention. ”

You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life. ”

You don't have to make your life look like anybody else says it should look. ”

Mudbound,' you know, is about home. 'Mudbound' is about what it means to be a citizen, and 'Mudbound,' in fact, is set in this post-reconstruction era that we haven't really explored. You know, not since 'Sounder' have we even really explored that experience. ”

Filmmaking in general is my second career. I thought that writing wasn't practical, so I went to business school and got an MBA, and I worked three years in grant management. ”

A producer has to want you. And if the producer trusts you and asks for your vision, it frees you up so much, not having to explain or fight for every decision. You're allowed to create. ”