Jordan Peele

“I'll say this: The scariest monster in the world is human beings and what we are capable of, especially when we get together.”

“As far as writing and directing, I'm very focused on the thriller genre.”

“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.”

“Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn't have a ton of heroes that you can look to.”

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

“As a black man, sometimes you can't tell if what you're seeing has underlying bigotry, or it's a normal conversation and you're being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there.”

“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.”

“I am a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino, who takes time to figure out what his next movie is.”

“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.”

“Part of the desire to live in a post-racial world includes the desire not to have to talk about racism, which includes a false perception that if you are talking about race, then you're perpetuating the notion of race. I reject that.”

“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.”

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

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

“African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.”

“Racism comes in many different forms. Sometimes it's subtle, and sometimes it's overt. Sometimes it's violent, and sometimes it's harmless, but it's definitely here. It's something that I think we're all guilty of, and we just have to make sure that we deal with our own personal racism in the right way.”

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

“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 thriller were the most powerful genres to me.”

“There's something kind of horrific about milk. Think about it! Think about what we're doing. Milk is kind of gross.”

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

“I want to believe in ghosts. I love ghost stories.”