People From Los Angeles

"…what I’ve learned about it throughout the years is that it’s my way of giving voice to the often voiceless; I write mostly about the sort of people on the opposite end of flush, and so when I hear them speak in this kinda jagged form of poetry, it moves me in a way I can’t even really describe. Technically speaking, some actors sing it beautifully, others can’t wrap their minds around it."

"…I like the word impressionistic more than experimental for some reason. I think experimental, I think of abstract language met with geometric stage gestures, while my writing tends to be worlds and people that we know and recognize, but the rules have changed on them. And on us, the audience, but the struggle is that I want the audiences to not spend time trying to figure out the rules, rather to accept them and see what it means to them as the world unfolds."

"…With theatre, I’m attracted to stories of social or political relevance to the world we all live together in… With film or TV, I approach them much more as an audience member—stories I’d like to see…"

"There are so many stories to tell — we’re just as varied in experiences as white men, and it doesn’t look like people are sick of those stories yet. And I’m lucky enough to be in a position to tell these stories and share them."

"I don’t think California is perfect by any means. I’m sure there are a lot of people being oppressed here and not getting a fair shake. But I just feel like maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the location on the coast with access to all of Asia coming in and the strong immigrant communities here, that makes it different…I feel like in the East Coast, that’s still a thing in certain classes. That said, there are a lot of wealthy people here in California. There’s definitely segregation and classes in Los Angeles…"

"I think that when you’re a teen, you can be overwhelmed with change. You’re expected to be ready for adulthood, to know what you want to do with the rest of your life, to have mature relationships. But it’s only been like 2.5 years since you had braces, or got your period, or stopped playing with Barbies! So I think it’s easy to retreat into apathy and fear and to not try. Because trying means you can fail and be embarrassed—and those are two things that are literally the worst when you’re in high school…"

"The character doesn’t have to be exactly like them, but as an author you have to give something to the reader that shows the vulnerability and where the character’s coming from…You can have characters do awful things, but you make them relatable or have some kind of backstory that makes their actions, even if it’s not excusable, understandable…"

"I know it’s a good play if I’m afraid to show it to my grandmother."

"The burqa has different meanings for many women who wear it. I think as Americans we have a tendency to only associate this garment with violence, oppression, and fear without really knowing much about its history or cultural significance. It is my hope that audience members will approach this play with an open mind and an open heart to allow for an alternate perspective that is both positive and meaningful."

"Being a playwright —especially in this current climate— is a privilege; I believe that as artists we have a responsibility to share narratives that we often don’t hear about or expect. When you subvert the status quo and reveal the truth in universality, you can spark change…"

"I think there are elements of the playwright in every play they write – it’s hard to completely disassociate from your characters and their given circumstances when you are the person creating it all…"

"(By this time, David Crosby had “discovered” you singing in a club in Coconut Grove, Florida. What was he like back then?) He was tanned. He was straight. He was clearing out his boat, and it was going to be the beginning of a new life for him. He was paranoid about his hair, I remember. Having long hair in a short hair society. He had a wonderful sense of humor. Crosby has enthusiasm like no one else. He can make you feel like a million bucks. Or he can bring you down with the same force. Crosby, in producing that first album, did me an incredible service, which I will never forget. He used his success and name to make sure my songs weren’t tampered with to suit the folk-rock trend."

"I don’t know if I have two weeks left of life or 10 years, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with the time. If you sit there on your butt and worry about dying, then you fucking wasted it. I haven’t been wasting it. I’m having a really good time, and feeling wonderfully about it. Sooner or later, something is going to break. Right now, my life is pretty great."

""It can't happen here" is number one on the list of famous last words."

"If you don't love life you can't enjoy an oyster"

"San Francisco is terrifying. And it’s hilarious to me because the business community there wants to put lipstick on a pig. They want to put out this $4 million ad campaign pretending as though everything in San Francisco is all hunky-dory. It’s not hunky-dory. San Francisco is a nightmare."

"Co-workers looking at the leaked nudes from the hacking scandal while I judge them."

"But you know what else is ineffective? Using taxpayer’s money, funneling it to non-profits so they can literally buy crack pipes and hand them out at Skid-Row… So, anyone on the left who wants to come at me and pretend like this is just a right-wing scare-mongering talking point, you’re full of crap."

"National Rifle Association"

"Founding Fathers of the United States"

"This comments might be strong, but it's how I genuinely feel. I don't care that you are christian. I don't care what the Bible says. Like, I feel like it's a clown show, like sitting here, trying to decifer what your little mythical book has to say about these very real political issues, right? I don't care if you are christian. In fact, I will fight for you to have your religious liberty and practice your christianity. I believe in that. I don't believe in christianity, which means that you do not get to dictate the way I live my life based on your religion. I don't care what the Bible says. You have every right in the world, all those women who identify with your religion have every right in the world to not get an abortion, to not take birth control, but they do not have the right to dictate my life and what I decide to do with my body. I don't care about your goddamn religion! I am so tired of having nonstop conversations about what the Bible says. You live your life in the way that you intepret the Bible. Again, I don't care. You don't get to take the Bible and tell me: "Well, the Bible says this, in this chapter, in this verse". I don't care. I don't care, I don't believe in it, and I have the right, based on our Constitution, to not believe in it. (5 November 2018)"

"We spent $13 billion in Los Angeles alone last year to combat homelessness. You want to know where that money went? That money went to these trash non-profits who have a bunch of executives making half a million dollars a year. You are running a non-profit dealing with homelessness. That’s my money. That’s my parents’ money. Okay. That is the hard-working people of California paying incredibly high taxes that go to what?"

"For most of American history, the court has been decidedly favorable to business, regardless of whether the majority of justices was liberal or conservative."

"Many critics of Citizens United believe that corporations have the same rights as individuals because the Supreme Court defines them as people. The proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is based on this idea... Yet corporate personhood has played only a secondary role in the corporate rights movement. ...[J]ustices have more often relied upon a very different conception... an association capable of asserting the rights of its members. This... has paved the way for the steady expansion of corporate rights. Indeed, corporate personhood has traditionally—and surprisingly—been used to justify limits on the rights of corporations."

"So, yeah, I am sick of it. I am sick of it. And honestly, just experiencing what I have seen on the ground in California has made me question a lot about left-wing ideology."

"Firearms regulation"

"Despite the fact that corporations have never been subjected to systematic opression like women and minorities... today corporations have nearly the same rights as individuals... a considerable share of the Constitution's most fundamental protections."

"[I]n Citizens United... justices ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. The decision was wildly unpopular, with poles showing an overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans opposed. ...As of 2016, sixteen states and hundreds of municipalities had endorsed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United..."

"Four years after Citizens United, the Supreme Court expanded the rights... in the Hobby Lobby case. ...The company ...was allowed an exemption from a federal rule requiring large employers to include birth control in their employee's health plans. The Hobby Lobby decision has since been cited to support the claims of businesses whose owners do not wish to provide wedding services to same-sex couples on grounds of religion."

"Gun rights and gun control, however, have lived together since the birth of the country. Americans have always had the right to keep and bear arms as a matter of state constitutional law. Today, 43 of the 50 state constitutions clearly protect an individual’s right to own guns, apart from militia service. Yet we’ve also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.... Today, the NRA is the unquestioned leader in the fight against gun control. Yet the organization didn’t always oppose gun regulation.... In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control. The organization’s president at the time was Karl T. Frederick, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer known as “the best shot in America”—a title he earned by winning three gold medals in pistol-shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games. As a special consultant to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Frederick helped draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation.... Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales. The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms."

"[T]he Citizens United and Hobby Lobby cases are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg."

"Like the KKK, the NRA was also formed right after the Civil War. The organization’s first major involvement with promoting gun laws tainted by prejudice was in the 1920s and 30s. In response to urban gun violence often associated with immigrants, especially those from Italy, the NRA’s president, Karl Frederick, helped draft model legislation to restrict concealed carry of firearms in public. States, Frederick’s model law recommended, should only allow concealed carry by people with a license, and those licenses should be restricted to “suitable” people with “proper reason for carrying” a gun in public. Thanks to the NRA’s endorsement, these laws were adopted in the majority of states. The 1960s saw another wave of gun control laws that were, at least in part, motivated by race. After Malcolm X promised to fight for civil rights “by any means necessary” while posing for Ebony magazine with an M1 Carbine rifle in his hand and the Black Panthers took to streets of Oakland with loaded guns, conservatives like Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, began promoting gun control. Black radicals with guns, coupled with the devastating race riots that wiped out whole neighborhoods in Newark and Detroit in 1967, helped persuade Congress to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968. That law barred felons from purchasing firearms, expanded the licensing of gun dealers, and barred imports of “Saturday Night Specials”—cheap, often poorly made guns that were frequently used for crime by urban youth. As one gun control supporter at the time frankly admitted, a close look at that law revealed that it wasn’t really about controlling guns; it was about controlling blacks. And the NRA, in its signature publication, American Rifleman, took credit for the law and extolled its virtues."

"Corporations did not win their constitutional rights in quite the same way as women, racial minorities, or gays and lesbians... [who] pursued their claims in both courts of law and the court of public opinion. To achieve lasting constitutional change... required more... Lawsuits were backed up by broad-based, popular social movements that demanded rights for those who had been denied the original premise of We the People."

"Although Americans often think of the Supreme Court as a bulwark to protect minority rights against the tyranny of the majority, the court's record... was dishearteningly bad prior to the 1950s. For most of American history, the Supreme Court failed to protect the dispossessed and marginalized... [T]he court's record on corporate rights was much different. In 1809... corporations won that first case—and have compiled an impressive list of victories... [T]he court has insisted that broad public sentiment favoring business regulation must bend to the demands of the Constitution."

"In December 1882, ... appeared before the justices of the Supreme Court... to argue that corporations like his client, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, were entitled to equal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Although that provision of the Constitution said that no state shall "deprive any person... " or "deny to any person..." Conkling insisted the... drafters intended to cover business corporations too. ...The Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of freed slaves, not to protect corporations. Conkling, however, had unusual credibility... If anyone could testify to the intent of the... drafters, it was Conkling, who was one himself. ...Conkling produced a musty, never-before-published journal that purported to detail his committee's deliberations. ...There was just one small problem with Conkling's account of the drafting... it was not true."

"In recognition of the nation’s changing demographics, the NRA is making a major push to diversify: Its new spokesman, Colion Noir, is an engaging African American millennial. Yet the NRA’s annual convention remains largely a sea of white folks. And as the NRA’s reluctance to make a statement in support of Philando Castile suggests — many believe the group would have immediately backed a white concealed-carrier in such circumstances — there is still a long way to go.... By the light of the law, the answer is easy: The Constitution prohibits racl discrimination in all rights, including the right to bear arms. By the light of history, however, the answer is far more complicated. From America’s earliest days, the right to bear arms has been profoundly shaped by race. Indeed, for much of our history, the right’s protections extended almost exclusively to whites. The founding generation that adopted the Second Amendment also enacted racially discriminatory gun laws. Fearing slave revolts, early American lawmakers prohibited slaves — and often free blacks, too — from possessing weapons of any kind."

"Although a procedural snafu prevented the Supreme Court from issuing a final ruling... justices soon after embraced Conkling's argument... In the years that followed, the Supreme Court would invoke those corporate rights to invalidate numerous laws governing how businesses were to be run, supervised, and taxed. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, when a scholar set out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court... 28 cases [dealt] with the rights of African Americans... 312 cases... with the rights of corporations."

"The National Rifle Association’s days of being a political powerhouse may be numbered. Why? The answer is in the numbers. Support for, and opposition to, gun control is closely associated with several demographic characteristics, including race, level of education and whether one lives in a city. Nearly all are trending forcefully against the NRA. The core of the NRA’s support comes from white, rural and relatively less educated voters. This demographic is currently influential in politics but clearly on the wane. ...the heart of the organization’s power is the voters it can turn out to vote, and they are likely to decline in number."

"When I first released the song [Quiet], I put on my site like, "I'm a survivor of abuse and anorexia and this is my song in response to it." And so when the song went viral, it became "the anti-Trump song," it was like a really political thing. And I'm so glad I stuck to the truth...I was like I'm not going to try to please others and say, oh yeah, this is not political. I just stuck with what it really was, my truth."

"The rhetoric [during the 2016 presidential election] that was used to describe women really enraged me, and just kind of brought me back to those feelings of when I was younger. I was told I needed to "sit properly," and I need to "speak less" and "smile more" and "lose weight" and just be this perfect little girl."

"I was put on a diet when I was 10. My mother said that women with smaller mouths are attractive, so keep my mouth small, don't talk or laugh so loud. I was taught to observe and listen. I burnt time burning calories when I could have been thinking about other things."

"For me to deal with my own anxieties about it and my friends' anxieties, I can create art. That's how I feel better about things... ["Quiet"] was just a way of giving people some space to feel love and hope in this time of fear mongering."

"[It is] so important for women of color to have a voice, because we have been living in a paradigm where women of color, and men of color, and all genders in-between color — our voices have not been as quote-unquote "valuable." That is a problem because that creates a sense of not belonging, and invisibility. I felt so voiceless, and like I didn't matter. Like I was an inconvenience of space because I didn't look like the woman in the magazine or I didn't have the same upbringing as the people I was watching on television. But now that women of color are rising...a lot of women of color are bearing a lot of responsibility of healing their cultures, and there's a way that women are able to empathize deeply, and they are able to express things that can maybe help the mainstream culture understand. Because I think the more we tell different types of stories, the more tolerance there will be."

"The message that really pisses me off is like, "Well, women in the Middle East are getting their genitalia cut, so you should just shut up." That is completely wrong. The point is we're not all truly free until we're all free, and the women who have mouthpieces need to speak up for the women in other places, and for men too."

"I could use my imagination and I read a lot about mental health. And that puts you in the perspective of just how difficult it is to live in a mind that that doesn't always feel like your own and how…I mean, just, that's brutal in its own way. And that can be a very lonely, difficult place, and a very difficult frame of mind to articulate to anyone, to even want to share with anyone."

"Malek has about three facial expressions in his arsenal, so his eyes do a lot of the work on Mr. Robot."

"Someone took a selfie with me today on the street, and to see them plug in their passcode right in front of you — it’s not something I would ever do, and it’s borderline creepy, but my show just makes me so much more aware of how to conduct oneself in public. It’s little things we take for granted, like holding your passport out while you wait in line at an airport, and someone can screenshot that in a heartbeat. The amount of information that we arbitrarily extend to the world is very mind-boggling to me. It’s like we’re saying, “Go ahead,” Clint Eastwood-style, “make my day.”"

"It's sad! Some really tragic moments have happened in my life and I found myself not getting emotional. Subconsciously, I was saving the grief so that, down the line, I could layer pain on top of pain. Because I want to feel that throughout my life. I want it to be easily accessible."

"I know Elliot does not come across as charismatic, but to me he is."

"I really wanted Elliot's clothes to feel like it was a bit of an urban combat uniform. We needed the wardrobe to reflect his desire to disappear from the world. So I suggested a hoodie. Well, maybe I shouldn't say 'suggest.'"