Quotes About Empowerment

There were many African Americans - many, many stories similar to my story.

2Pac made me want to rap, he made me want to speak my ghetto story and not be ashamed of it.

I grew up in the Midwest, and I was a short, fat, little Jewish kid... but it was just different. People didn't understand, so I had to deal with it. One day, I physically dealt with it, and it never happened again. I'm not saying that's the way to do it, but you have to stand up for yourself, period, end of story.

I'm not interested in being the damsel in distress; I want someone who has her own storyline and her own mission - not a woman who, to use a comedy term, is just there to provide the feed line to someone else's joke.

I think it's very refreshing to see women in cinema having strength and their own independent storyline.

Be it in Malayalam or Tamil, I got to play characters who had plenty to do in the storyline and not just be a prop.

We try to guide with a light touch. Sometimes we can be helpful, and my goal with my team, both on the series side and on the film side, is that the collaboration should always be invited. In other words, we're not looking to impose our view on the filmmaker; we hire a storyteller because we love the story, and we love their ability to tell it.

People expect me to be, first and foremost, a storyteller. I lead by telling stories.

As long as I'm making something from my voice, from my perspective there will be Asian American content because I am the storyteller.

When you face up to bad things in the past, the most important thing is not to allow them to happen today or in the future, and as storytellers, we must play our part in that.

I formed this thing called the Half Foundation, and what I tried to do is quantify hiring practices in Hollywood. Half the population is women, so half of the storytellers should be women. Fifty percent of all the directors in my company are women, and it will forever be that way.

Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.

When I think about the shows that we have on our air, we've been known for a long time for shows that feature strong, dynamic, powerful women at their forefront. And we're going to continue with that kind of storytelling.

In 21st-century storytelling all bets are off: anybody can do anything. We're all storytellers.

My mom used to call me 'Oprah' because I was always in a corner crying with somebody. I've always been attracted to storytelling around women's lives.

Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories.

I've spoken before on how the art of storytelling has been lost a bit. I definitely feel 'Empire' is helping to reprogram us back to that place where we pay attention and invest emotionally in the records and the artists.

I don't care what we're quote-unquote selling; we're about inspiring people through storytelling.

I work for ABC. If the thing that ABC is paying me for is storytelling - not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things - then it is up to me to find the most creative space possible so that that function of my job can happen.

We promote Asian storytelling - not just Asian stories but Asian people in stories with the full spectrum of the human experience. When you say, 'Oh, it's not enough attention on Asians. It's more black and white,' that game becomes like you're playing the discrimination Olympics.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I'm for anything life-affirmative. I'm for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who's different.

If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.

When I was coming up as a kid, there were programs that kept me out of trouble and on the straight and narrow in South Central Los Angeles, and I always felt that when I got to a stage where I could provide similar opportunities to kids then I would do that.

I'm louder and bigger with my curls. There's power in that. Also, straight hair is kind of annoying. It gets caught in my collar.