Producers From The United States

"There is as much wisdom in listening as there is in speaking - and that goes for all relationships, not just romantic ones."

"I wanted to be an actor. I never wanted to grow up. I never wanted to. I wanted to fly."

"I realized that the actors were the last hired and the first fired. There are no facts here in movies and television really, it's all opinions forcibly argued and if you can express your opinion articulately and with force and belief, you can win this, you can do this, and I just loved it."

"It's one thing to talk about lack of diversity and lack of representation. But that doesn't matter if you're not good at what you're supposed to be doing."

"Alone we are much weaker than if we are allied with others who care, not just about Asian Americans, but about the issue of hate and discrimination and bigotry in general. Now I wouldn’t deign to try and compare the Asian American experience to any other minorities’ experience in America, because each one is unique in their own ways. But what we do have in common is that we have all experienced bigotry. We have all experienced prejudice. What’s most important to understand is that this is a human issue. This is not just an Asian American one."

"As someone of Korean descent, I am certain my road was a bit hard. I have to say anyone who's an aspiring actor has a difficult road regardless of race."

"I think there are pluses and minuses to the emergence of Asian cinema in America. It's about time that a lot of these films got recognized because there are very talented people behind them - the directors, actors, writers. I don't think it is a coincidence that a lot of stories from Asia are being remade by American studios. They are really interesting stories and deserve to be shown here."

"When I was a kid, I honestly never thought about race. I didn't see differences."

"When you do action stuff and sci-fi stuff, you have a lot to hide behind - the hair and the makeup and the special effects. But when you play a normal girl, it's challenging because you have to trust yourself."

"Whenever I meet someone new, I always extend a hand and say, 'Hi I'm Lana Condor... Condor like the ugly endangered bird.' I like to see how people react to that and if they laugh and, indeed, know what a condor is... chances are we're going to get along just fine!"

"What if the Internet breaks tomorrow? Then you'd realize that you're a human being, and you're not validated by what other people think of you - it's how you think of yourself."

"I love educating myself on different cultures' dishes and foods that are important and celebrated within that culture. I also think food brings people together. It's unifying!"

"I truly believe the reason why there is a demand for rom-coms is because humans, whether its conscious or subconscious, have a need to feel happy and to see love."

"No one writes each other letters anymore, but I think there's something so special about receiving a really heartfelt letter, still."

"I wanted to go to college to be a journalist and follow in my dad's work. And then I became an actor."

"When you're the only woman of color, and you walk into a room of people who don't look like you, most of them with blond hair and blue eyes, it's disheartening. The weirdest part is that I walk in and assume they think I'm auditioning to play a different role than them, but I'm going out for their same role."

"A lot challenges me! Not psyching myself out, not doubting myself, not comparing myself to others... all of that challenges me. But inevitably, challenges are put into our lives so that we may grow and become the best version of who we are meant to be."

"There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me."

"My parents would dress us up in traditional Vietnamese clothing to go to school for heritage day. We have a Vietnamese nanny that my parents wanted us to have so we could stay in touch and know where we came from."

"I think what TikTok has done with Gen Z and teaching people how to cook is just make it more relatable."

"For many kids, politics feel very distant. This might be the first time it hits home for a lot of kids."

"It’s really less about the followers and really more about entertaining. If you’re entertaining, it will find the people that you can entertain."

"A script is only the beginning of the process. But with books, what you write is exactly what people read. So as a writer, that's very satisfying."

"There was no interference, nothing on a creative level, you have the idea, you go for it. And that's what it was like with all the shows made back then, it was that attitude that really created Nickelodeon and made the show as good as it was."

"The thing is, kids love scary stories. They love dramatic stories. They love that kind of stuff. It’s one of the reasons why I write books now. I’m able to write the kind of stuff I like, whereas in TV I can’t do that anymore."

"I rarely take the characteristics of someone I know and make them a complete fictional character, except maybe with truly minor characters who only play a small role. All of my characters are more like the Frankenstein monster, having been stitched together using multiple real people. The classic advice to any writer is "write what you know". So in order to create believable characters, you have to write about people you know."

"Any screenwriter will tell you that as satisfying and wonderful a career as that is, outside of the people you work with, nobody actually reads what you write. Your writing goes through a process, touched by multiple dozens of people, until it becomes a finished piece of film. As an example on a very simple level, you may write a line of dialog that you absolutely love, but an actor had to speak that line, and music might be there to underscore the line, and the line might be read in a situation where a dozen other things are happening simultaneously. It's all good and the way it is supposed to work, but the overall experience becomes about so much more than the line itself. Writing a book is much more pure than that, and I wanted to experience it."

"If you’re an optimist and you believe in miracles like I do, and you can find something that makes you giggle every day and that you love and you spend your day helping people–that is the best anti-aging system. It really is. I’m just really grateful that the older I get, I can be more of a…not even a spokesperson or role model really. Maybe the better term would be an influencer. All I want to do is be able to shine my light and help somebody else to turn their light up too. Because together we can shine so brightly."

"I am a Chinese American actor and there was nothing for me, and how can you take that slap in the face back and forth each year? Being from Minnesota, I’m a fighter, you know. I was an artist and wanted something more because it’s a lifetime of work. You just don’t want to get a paycheck to become a cliché person."

"The creative community has a lot more ideas than the executive community feels comfortable with."

"We’ve been doing this for awhile, when you’ve been doing this a long time, you cross your fingers and hope for the best, but you never know. To find an audience that’s passionate, that’s as good as it gets."

"Now, I don't know if you've been following the news, but I've been keeping my ears open, and it seems like everyone everywhere is super-mad about everything all the time."

"Building a gazebo in the middle of the civil war, that'd be like doing stand-up comedy now."

"And now there's nazis again. When I was a kid, nazis was just an anology you would use to decimate your child during an argument at the dinner table. Now there's new nazis. I don't care for these new nazis, and you may quote me on that. These new nazis, "Jews are the worst, and Jews ruin everything, and Jews try to take over your life." It's like, you know what, motherfucker? My wife is Jewish. I know all that, how do you know all that?"

"You spend most of your day telling a robot that you're not a robot. Think about that for two minutes and tell me you don't want to walk into the ocean."

"The world is run by robots, and we spend most of our day telling them that we're not a robot just to log on and look at our own stuff."

"I'm allowed to make fun of my wife. I asked her and she said yes. [...] I said, "Do you mind if I still make fun of you on stage?" And my wife said, "Yeah, you can make fun of me. But just don't say that I'm a bitch and that you don't like me." I was like, "Whoa, the bar is so much lower than I ever imagined. That's it?" [...] Also, I would never say that, not even as a joke, that my wife is a bitch and I don't like her. That is not true. My wife is a bitch and I like her so much."

"I don't know what my body is for other than just taking my head from room to room."

"I'm gross. I have hair on my shoulders now. I don't even have a joke for that, that's how much I hate that shit."

"Famous people are weird as shit. They're all weird. Your suspicions are correct."

"That's how I walk into rooms. I'm 35 years old, I am six feet tall. I lower myself, I go, "Hi. Knock knock." I say "knock, knock" out loud."

"Crazy people are like that. They have unlimited crazy currency. [...] The things they say mean nothing to them, but they mean everything to me."

"I loved being a temp, because I would just go from office to office and be terrible at a different job for a week."

"I know now that I'm definetely never gonna be president. Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly."

"You remember being 12, when you're like, "No one look at me or I'll kill myself.""

"Marijuana is legal in, like, 18 or 19 states in one form or another. It's insane. Yeah, well... All right, don't "whoo" if you're white. It's always been legal for us."

"The greatest assembly of them all, once a year, Stranger Danger. [...] You are gathered together as a school and you are told never to talk to an adult that you don't know, and you are told this by an adult that you don't know."

"College is just your opinion. Just you raising your hand and being like, "I think Emily Dickinson's a lesbian." And they're like, "Partial credit." And that's a whole thing."

"College was like a four-year game show called Do My Friends Hate Me or Do I Just Need to Go to Sleep? But instead of winning money, you lose $120,000."

"How dare you clap? How dare you clap for the worst financial decision I ever made in my life? I paid $120,000 for someone to tell me to go read Jane Austen and then I didn't."