“I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't ...” — Octavia Spencer Quote

“I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't have to be the damsel in distress. They don't have to not show their strength. They don't have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds.”

“The thing about the South is we accept our history. We don't push it under the rug.”

“Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.”

“I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.”

“Innovation requires resources to invest, and you can see many companies pulling back and going into an intense protective mode in a major extended period of financial distress.”

“I'm not interested in being the damsel in distress; I want someone who has her own storyline and her own mission - not a woman who, to use a comedy term, is just there to provide the feed line to someone else's joke.”