Dee Rees

I want people to get from 'Pariah' that it's okay to be you and not to check a box as a parent…

— Dee Rees

I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea.

— Dee Rees

I thought that marketing was a way to be creative in business but quickly learned all creative stuff happens at the ad…

— Dee Rees

When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and…

— Dee Rees

I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else.

— Dee Rees

My ultimate dream was just to be an auteur.

— Dee Rees

For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences.…

— Dee Rees

When I first came out, holidays were hard. I reached a point where I didn't go home anymore. I constructed my own,…

— Dee Rees

You can't be limited by your own experience.

— Dee Rees

We shouldn't be discriminating against each other. The whole 'light skin versus dark skin' is an idea we need to break down.

— Dee Rees

Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you.

— Dee Rees

Each moment is defined by a multitude of histories, the past constantly converging upon us, perpetually decaying and reforming itself on the…

— Dee Rees

I'd go to lesbian parties. I felt like I wasn't hard enough to be butch, but I wasn't wearing heels and a…

— Dee Rees

Before Charlottesville, it might have been easy to dismiss the plot of 'Mudbound' as no longer relevant. Now, I feel like audiences…

— Dee Rees

For me, like, obviously, I want to see myself onscreen.

— Dee Rees

I love directing because you get to see your film come to life. You get to work with the actors. There's something…

— Dee Rees

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

— Dee Rees

There's a lot of power in saying no to big things that you don't want to do in order to say yes…

— Dee Rees

I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I…

— Dee Rees

I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to…

— Dee Rees

You don't have to make yourself look like people expect you to look.

— Dee Rees

It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different…

— Dee Rees

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

— Dee Rees

When I'm on set, I know what I want.

— Dee Rees

I've been around many different lives, many different voices. It was amazing material for a writer.

— Dee Rees