History informs where we are and how we got here.

I'm always choosing the hard things, the things that aren't easy.

I'm always excited about stories that allow me to explore a character and create interesting stories and worlds that we haven't seen before.

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

You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life.

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

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

Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.'

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

'Mudbound,' you know, is about home. 'Mudbound' is about what it means to be a citizen, and 'Mudbound,' in fact, is set in this post-reconstruction era that we haven't really explored. You know, not since 'Sounder' have we even really explored that experience.