Dustin Lance Black Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Dustin Lance Black Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
We’ve got the same problems any other gay couple and any other straight couple have. But it’s 90 percent great. And that’s better than most, I think. That’s me and Tom.
Dustin Lance Black
2
What’s beautiful about the journey of surrogacy is that relationship you build with your surrogate, when it’s done in places with good law. These aren’t women you stop speaking to once your child is born, this is someone who’s part of your family.
Dustin Lance Black
3
I’d say I’m not sure about Christianity, but I sure do like their Christ and the lessons about turning the other cheek, about forgiveness, of yourself and others.
Dustin Lance Black
4
The drive to be a parent is strong. It’s one of the most ingrained human traits there is.
Dustin Lance Black
5
I always thought that the film would be successful if we captured Harvey Milk, like the way Harvey really was-the personality, the humor, the corny bad jokes, all of it.
Dustin Lance Black
6
I am sick and tired of the myopia in the gay and lesbian movement. It’ll doom the movement.
Dustin Lance Black
7
You know, growing up Mormon, I always got the sense that it was hard for the leaders of the church to feel like they were outside of Christianity. I think, you know Mormon people believe that they are Christian, and a lot of people outside of the Mormon Church, you know, don’t see them that way.
Dustin Lance Black
8
The things that I’m interested in directing are fiction, because then you’re not married to a particular reality.
Dustin Lance Black
9
My mom would watch me giving speeches on TV and she’d call and say, ‘I don’t know who this son is.’
Dustin Lance Black
10
One of the great things about being married to my husband, who is also an impossible dreamer, is that we just do things.
Dustin Lance Black
11
Gay and lesbian people want to love and be loved. Some of us want to get married. Some want to have and build families. We want our kids to have their lives be a little bit better than what we’ve had.
Dustin Lance Black
12
I get emotionally attached to someone if I talk to them on the street corner for five minutes.
Dustin Lance Black
13
For Coca-Cola to take a pro-diversity, pro-equality stance creates a lot of goodwill in the LGBT community.
Dustin Lance Black
14
There was a criticism of ‘Milk’ that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.
Dustin Lance Black
15
There’s a difference between fame and fame for fame’s sake.
Dustin Lance Black
16
People are always going to disagree politically, because we all come at the law from a different perspective with different needs.
Dustin Lance Black
17
If you do something with acceptance and kindness, you can create a true friendship.
Dustin Lance Black
18
My father, my Mormon father, took off when I was a young man and, or actually very young, I was like six years old, so a young boy.
Dustin Lance Black
19
How amazing is it that when a young gay or lesbian person has their first crush, no matter where they live in the country, they can imagine that all the way to marriage? When I first experienced a crush, in Texas, there was maybe a second of butterflies that were then dammed in by the fear of what that meant.
Dustin Lance Black
20
I was very lucky to hear the story of Harvey Milk, it was life-saving for me. I wanted to share it in case it helped others, but the story of one gay man isn’t going to do it.
Dustin Lance Black
21
I tend to read ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’ online, and I go to the website for the BBC. I am a junkie when it comes to the news.
Dustin Lance Black
22
Gay people are more powerful when they work with lesbians. We become more powerful when we’re L, G, B and T.
Dustin Lance Black
23
You know, for a long time I became almost atheist. I believed in nothing. And it was tough for me to believe in anything at all because I had believed so strongly. And I divorced myself of spirituality, I think.
Dustin Lance Black
24
Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy.
Dustin Lance Black
25
Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.
Dustin Lance Black
26
Here’s the thing with ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ it doesn’t matter how many times you watch it, it’s always interesting, and you’re always identifying with a different scene in the movie – at least I am.
Dustin Lance Black
27
I’m drawn to making films that in some way move the social conversation.
Dustin Lance Black
28
I am hopeful that there are three or four Harvey Milks. It would be nice to have one in California and one in New York and one in Texas and Oklahoma-it would be fantastic. Maybe even one in Salt Lake City. I would like that.
Dustin Lance Black
29
I watched Sean Penn, you know, bring Harvey Milk to life. I was on the set every day.
Dustin Lance Black
30
I hope we build a son who’s strong enough to stand up for other people. And if Donald Trump is out there teaching folks how to build walls, we’re hoping to instil in our son the ability to know how to take them down.
Dustin Lance Black
31
Through my political work in D.C., and having done ‘Milk’ I got to know a lot of gay octogenarians. They are lovely and they like to tell their stories, and I like hearing them.
Dustin Lance Black
32
I’m industrious. Ambitious. I’m like the gay Mitt Romney… That’s a terrible thing to say.
Dustin Lance Black
33
Just like my mom, when things get bad, I get quiet. The worse they get, the more silent I become.
Dustin Lance Black
34
Have I always agreed with my Southern, military, Mormon family? Absolutely not. Have we always figured out how to get along? Yes! At the point at which politics supersedes the family and community, we’ve got a real problem.
Dustin Lance Black
35
Our brothers and sisters in the trans community, they showed up to every one of our marriage marches when it wasn’t necessarily what they needed. So we have to be there for them, use our lessons learned in the marriage fight – how to win when it’s difficult, how to change minds that are difficult to change.
Dustin Lance Black
36
Most of my family is still active in the Mormon Church. They live in Utah and Provo and Orem and Salt Lake City.
Dustin Lance Black
37
When I was in my twenties, I would always read my horoscope.
Dustin Lance Black
38
Too many of my heroes have been cut down, but do I want security guards? No. I’ve been offered them in the past. But the more you present yourself as someone afraid of being attacked, the more people see you as someone to attack.
Dustin Lance Black
39
I do try to deliver a solid first draft, meaning it’s my tenth or twentieth draft and then I call it ‘first’ and hand it in, much to the chagrin of the studio sometimes when they look at the contract and go, ‘You’ve passed your deadline.’
Dustin Lance Black
40
The octogenarians who have pictures of Hillary Clinton under their toilet-bowl covers – they’ve completely accepted me.
Dustin Lance Black
41
My problem is always the number of hours in a day, not the number of things I want to do.
Dustin Lance Black
42
I like the gray movies. I don’t know if audiences always… it makes them work a little harder. And they have to work hard in ‘Hoover.’
Dustin Lance Black
43
Children are raised by single parents all the time. Those children – I’d like to claim myself as one, I was raised by a single mother who raised me incredibly well.
Dustin Lance Black
44
Being right is overrated! If someone is saying that they’re right about the future, that’s a claim only a fool would make.
Dustin Lance Black
45
I probably saw ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for the first time in college.
Dustin Lance Black
46
When I got the deal to do ‘J. Edgar,’ which was really the brainchild of Brian Grazer, ‘Milk’ hadn’t come out yet. We had just completed principal photography, and it was still basically this little film where we just really hoped someone would see it.
Dustin Lance Black
47
Mom got very heated about the new government policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In her view it was going to allow closeted gay people into her military and she was really against it… she just assumed I agreed with her opinions.
Dustin Lance Black
48
You can’t keep treating people differently under the law because of their differences. That’s not America. I dare say that’s not even a good conservative value. We’re all supposed to have an equal shot.
Dustin Lance Black
49
As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: ‘I will rise above my station.’
Dustin Lance Black
50
If you go to Paris, try to speak French. If you go to the South, try to speak Southern. Southern isn’t stupid. Southern is narrative; Southern is family.
Dustin Lance Black
51
My mom was paralyzed from polio at the age of 2, abandoned by her husband, left with a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old, and so, we were raising her as much as she was raising us.
Dustin Lance Black
52
I say to my pupils, ‘You can pitch me any thing you’ve got, but tell me why you’re the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.’
Dustin Lance Black
53
I’ve never encountered homophobia in casting from the studios or networks – not once, not ever. Where you encounter it is with the agents and the managers, they’re the ones who have an outdated notion of the price an actor might pay if it’s discovered that they’re LGBTQ.
Dustin Lance Black
54
I’m always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren’t always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.
Dustin Lance Black
55
I’m my mother’s son, so when it comes to altruism and understanding how to do things to benefit a person’s life… the women in my life have been much better than the men.
Dustin Lance Black
56
Hold onto power and you lose your moral compass.
Dustin Lance Black
57
Every single person in this world is a minority in one way or another. It just depends on how you slice the pie.
Dustin Lance Black
58
Growing up Mormon, you learn how to be very, very organized, and it’s a passionate group. I mean, in that way, it’s prepared me very well for Hollywood.
Dustin Lance Black
59
And the film that I’ve seen a million times is ‘When Harry Met Sally’ with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, and directed by Rob Reiner.
Dustin Lance Black
60
I never wanted to be a writer initially. It was not my thing, but I was an avid reader.
Dustin Lance Black
61
I wrote ‘Milk’ for me. I wrote it for the younger version of me that had no clue that there are people who’d ever fought for my rights.
Dustin Lance Black
62
The real power of any movement is how we work together with other social justice movements.
Dustin Lance Black
63
Mom came from what has been called the poorest place in America – Lake Providence, Louisiana. She was born on the south side of the Mississippi which was mainly African American and even poorer than the rest.
Dustin Lance Black
64
I think for too many decades, the politicians have driven a wedge between the gay and lesbian communities and the religious communities for their own benefit, and I think it’s time to start to broach those divides.
Dustin Lance Black
65
I think of the biopics I’ve written as exploring a more grown-up side of myself, through other characters’ lives.
Dustin Lance Black
66
I have no respect for someone who lies about their sexuality. At the very least say ‘no comment’, just keep your personal life personal. If you’re going to closet yourself, that sends a negative message.
Dustin Lance Black
67
Some people only look at the good stuff and some people only look at the bad stuff.
Dustin Lance Black
68
In this miraculous, beautiful universe of ours, where it’s an absolute miracle that our eyes and ears can witness it all, we somehow have bought into this lie that the highest plane of existence is whether we put an R or a D on our voter registration card. That’s insanity.
Dustin Lance Black
69
‘Milk’ had to be a financial success, following the success of ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ It had to make money so studios would develop other LGBT projects.
Dustin Lance Black
70
I was about 15 years old when I moved to the Bay area.
Dustin Lance Black
71
I had a lot of success for many years, and the critics had been so kind. Sometimes it’s good to get cut down to size a little bit.
Dustin Lance Black
72
Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.
Dustin Lance Black
73
That’s what I learned most about directing on my own – you’ve got to build a family, a filmmaking family.
Dustin Lance Black
74
I love Jennifer Connelly.
Dustin Lance Black
75
There has been this resurgence in anti-LGBT language in the U.K. and the U.S., and the rest of the world. In the U.S. we’ve heard it with Trump’s rise. Here, I’ve heard language borrowed from the most conservative anti-gay voices in the U.S. used by some gay and lesbian people against trans people.
Dustin Lance Black