Jordan Peele

“I'm a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking.”

“I was a very scared child. Not, you know, not so much of life but of the demons that lurked in the dark. And horror movies terrified me. You know, I'd love watching them but then at night, I...”

“I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the 'other' category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific...”

“The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real.”

“I think, before Obama, there was a glass ceiling. That's a big change. As a president, I think he was the best. I felt like I could trust his judgment, and he'd take a measured, empathetic a...”

“I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.”

“As kids, there's somehow the fear that these bullies can end your life if they want to. Everything is blown up, and occasionally that kind of awful thing does happen.”

“You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you.”

“I find campfire stories and urban legends are kind of the bread and butter that inspires a lot of people who are making horror and thriller. There is a nugget of truth behind these sort of c...”

“I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense...”

“Now that the black experience isn't viewed as box-office death, people are catching up to untapped auteurs.”

“The power of story and the power of a well-crafted film or television show is really all you need to speak to people. I think Hollywood is sort of catching up to that.”

“You can track elections by who was playing that president on 'SNL' at that time. There's the theory that the more likable or charismatic impression would help get the president elected.”

“There is something transformative if you're a black person cheering in a theater and turn to see a white person cheering for the same thing you are.”

“I love getting cheers. I love giving scares. Anything that really works with the audience makes me happy.”

“Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared...”

“New York is about as cosmopolitan as it gets. It's a fairly mixed and woke town, so there weren't a lot of situations growing up where I felt like the outsider or the alien.”

“Little Haley Joel Osment in 'The Sixth Sense' can see dead people. Well, I can see racist people.”

“Each one of my movies is going to be about one of these different social demons. The first one, being 'Get Out,' is about race and neglect and marginalization.”

“When I talk about movies like 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Stepford Wives,' I really noticed that these movies were able to address fears surround the women's lib movement in a way that was engagi...”