Jordan Peele Quotes

Like comedy, horror has an ability to provoke thought and further the conversation on real social issues in a very powerful way.

We need to break boundaries, so every time I feel like, "Oh snap, oh my God, I don't know how this is gonna be received," I also feel this validation, like, "All the greats, all my favorites have felt this."

Sometimes blessings come in strange packages.

I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.

The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.

A greater truth that I think we are faced with on a day-to-day basis as minorities is: We are the color of skin first and people second.

How we act with each other really reveals our most animal instincts.

I can fathom anything, man. I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.

[ When I met Barack Obama] He says, I do a pretty good me myself - he said something like that. But he's - he is a close talker. He's a touchy guy.

The audience's imagination will do a better, more personalized version of the horror than you can actually paint. So that just, you know, with something like "The Blair Witch Project," which is, you know, whatever, it's 89 minutes of people running through the woods and one minute of, you know, a guy standing in a corner.

I just think racism is within each and every one of us. It's everyone's responsibility to figure out how they deal with this kind of obsolete instinct.

I think that human beings are the most awful monster we have ever seen.

Back when we were Neanderthals or whatever, we evolved to think along tribal lines. Survival was based on this idea of who are we and who are the others who will come and take our resources. I think it's an animal and a human thing that we all see in terms of us vs. them, and race is a very easy way to separate who is us and who is them.

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice.

We haven't done enough work to encourage minorities to strive to make movies. Hollywood is a place full of white male directors - there are many good ones. We just haven't nurtured our voices.

Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing.

Race is a universal flaw in humanity. So yes, I've been in many situations where I've felt like the outsider because of the color of my skin.

For me, the social thriller is the thriller in which the fears, the horrors, and the thrills are coming from society. They're coming from the way humans interact.

The scariest monster in the world is human beings and what we are capable of, especially when we get together.

When people get together, we are capable of the most beautiful, amazing things. But we are also capable of genocide.

What teenagers are ready to laugh at is the misery of other people.

Racism is within each and every one of us.

It's very uncomfortable to talk about race. It often devolves before it begins.

I don't think that humans are, in our nature, we're evil or anything like that. But I do think there's a demon in our DNA, in our tribal subconscious that affects the way we work and we operate as a group.

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.

If it's comedy, you taken an absurd comedic notion and you apply it to reality. If it's horror, if it's a thriller, you do the same thing.

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.

Obama was the best thing for black nerds everywhere. Finally we had a role model. Before Obama, we basically had Urkel.

We can convince ourselves to do things in conjunction with one another that we wouldn't have been able to do as an individual.

A part of being black in America and, you know, I presume being any minority, is constantly being told that we're being too aware of race somehow, we're obsessed with it or we're seeing racism where there just isn't racism.

I love dipping into worlds at a fast and furious pace. A little glimpse allows the audience to put together the rest of that world in their brain. I love sketches that require the audience to piece together the comedic engine themselves. Give them all the information but not tell them what the scene is about so they can have that eureka moment of, "Oh my God, he's only used to the way urban students pronounce their names. That's what's going on here.".

With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.

There might be some sinister modern form of slavery going on.

I didn't know my father very well; I only met him a few times.

I was raised that emotion was a good thing.

'Get Out' takes on the task of exploring race in America, something that hasn't really been done within the genre since 'Night of the Living Dead' 47 years ago.

Certainly, black horror movie fans have, you know, been particularly vocal. I mean, there's the whole Eddie Murphy routine about, you know, black people in a horror movie wouldn't last very long. Right? They just walk in - you hear get out. Too bad we can't stay, baby.

[Barack Obama] will touch you on the shoulder and, you know - in that big brother or father figure kind of way. And you really do feel sort of shepherded by him.

I think that is also something he [Barack Obama], in the beginning of his presidency, he couldn't really explore and couldn't show. He had to be almost a one-dimensional, stoic leader during that first election.

Everybody knows this legend in kind of African-American lore. There's always somebody in your neighborhood named Orangejello or Lemonjello. And that's spelled - Orangejello is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E-J-E-L-L-O.

Since we were renamed, and now it feels like 80 percent of the African-American population has the name Washington or Jefferson or some president or slave owner's name. And, I almost wonder is this, like, is this part of a way of taking back the principle of naming your - I might be going too far into this - but naming your kids something of your choice?

The world has wanted me to speak differently than I speak. You know, I speak like my mom; I speak like, you know, like the whitest white dude; I speak like a Def Comedy Jam comedian doing an impression of a white guy.

It's a no-win situation with politics, it's always going to be stressful. I'm more into the comedy of life.

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

Anyone who's really utilized collaboration has a philosophy like, 'Let's throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.' That's how we do it. At a certain point, we're cutting scripts that we love.

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 that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.

I've always thought of myself as an African-American comedian, African-American man, everything.

With a horror movie, you're making a metaphor. You're making a personalized nightmare for the protagonist.

I've been very lucky to have a family who has welcomed me and not been hung up on anything racial, almost overlooking the fact that there was a racial difference. But I can honestly say I do feel like I missed out on some lessons of what the African-American experience is like growing up.

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 Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.