Nate Parker Quotations

Identify your niche and dominate it. And when I say dominate, I just mean work harder than anyone else could possibly work at it.

We all serve a purpose. My purpose isn't to be rejected. My purpose isn't to think small or to be introverted. This door closed is literally pushing me to the next door.

Leadership is one of the things I really strive to excel in in my life.

I just feel like if I really believe what Dr. King said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,' then I should be compelled to use my God-given platform to effect change.

Sadly, black people disassociate ourselves from the things which make us who we are, identifying them as lesser, or inferior. It's a form of self hate.

We have a tendency to sugar coat the Civil Rights movement by showing arm in arm and everyone singing 'Kumbaya'. We don't really always show the resistance from the government, the resistance from the status quo, from the majority to silence the movement.

When I was young, to have a big nose, big lips or dark skin was the worst. You were the wretched.

I prefer to make movies which not only have a message for "then" but a message for "now."

I think chemistry and great acting go hand-in-hand.

The American dream is more about opportunity than anything else.

I coach a high school wrestling team and a middle school team. I consider myself a coach and an activist, so I'm really involved in the community.

I was working in computers when this stranger approached me out of the blue, saying I should become an actor. I took it as a gift from God, because I had been praying for clarity about what He wanted me to do, since I wasn't happy in computers.

The crazy thing is a lot of people - a lot of men, if I'm just speaking for myself - don't really start thinking about the effect of hyper-masculinity and false definitions of what it means to be a man until you get married or until you have kids. Because then all of sudden you have something to protect.

I never examined my role in male culture, in hyper masculinity. I never examined it, nobody ever called me on it.

I think there is having a behavior that is disrespectful to women that goes unchecked, where your manhood is defined by sexual conquests, where you trade stories with your friends and no one checks anyone. At 19, that was normal.

I'm trying to transform behaviors and ideas that have never been challenged in certain ways in my life. I'm not the kid that I was at 19.

I recognize as a man there's a lot of things that I don't have to think about. But I'm thinking about them now.

Trying to convince someone that they are a racist or they have White Privilege - if it's in the air they breathe and the culture supports them, sometimes they never have to think about it at all.

All I can do is seek the information that'll make me stronger, that'll help me overcome my toxic masculinity, my male privilege, because that's something you never think about.

If a person was accused of being a racist when he was young - he said some racially insensitive thing or someone had him on tape calling someone the n-word or whatever - and then you fast forward and he feels, Oh, back then I didn't say this or that. He's not thinking about the person that he hurt when he said what he said, or however it came out, or the effects that it could have had. He's not thinking about it. He's thinking about his own self and how he feels.

If I don't know how to swim and two weeks later I know how to swim, I know how to swim.

I'm 36-years-old and I'm learning about definitions that I should have known when I started having sex.

When you're 19, getting a girl to say yes, or being a dog, or being a player, cheating. Consent is all about - for me, back then - if you can get a girl to say yes, you win.

When you're 19, a threesome is normal. It's fun.

In all actuality, we got to do better about preparing our men for their interactions with women.

When I walk home at night I don't have to worry about anything. But when a woman walks home at night she gotta think about a lot of different things.

Some people think racism is if you say the n-word, so homophobia is if you call someone...

If I can use my platform to affect change in gender, as I can in race, then I think I can have an impact.

I'm not perfect, I'm a flawed man, but I'm willing to try to get better, I'm willing to listen.

Race I've been studying since I knew there was a problem with race and that I was Black and something was wrong. Gender, is very new to me. All I can say is this is something that I'm going to take hold of and pray about it.

I have engaged in hyper-male culture, and I'm learning about it, and I'm learning how I can change and help young boys and young men change.

I'm a work in progress. I'm trying to be better.

I got work to do. I got a lot of work to do within myself.

When you're in a relationship with someone you have to be in control of that relationship and you have to be as open as you can about everything, straight up, out the gate.

Being a woman in 2016 if very different, imagine being a woman 20 years ago, and when we talk about consent, maybe 20 years from now we'll know things about consent and examine it from a different perspective than we are now.

You can be addicted to White Supremacy and all of the benefits, you can be addicted to male privilege and all of the benefits that comes from it. It's like someone pointing at you and you have a stain on your shirt and you don't even know it.

At 19, if a woman said no, no meant no. If she didn't say anything and she was open, and she was down, it was like how far can I go? If I touch her breast and she's down for me to touch her breast, cool. If I touch her lower, and she's down and she's not stopping me, cool. I'm going to kiss her or whatever. It was simply if a woman said no or pushed you away that was non-consent.

For the women out there that I've hurt with my male privilege, I'm sorry.

If a director, I believe, has vision and knows so clearly what they want, then you can have a film that can perform. Whereas you can have done 50 movies, but if you're unsure this time, your movie may not turn out.

Sometimes little things can prolong an experience in a way that you run over budget. It's very scientific; a lot of people don't understand the science that goes behind making a film.

I believe in hiring people to do their jobs.I want to hire an editor.They say you make a movie three times: when you write it, when you direct it, and when you edit it. So I have three shots to get it right!

It's therapy. [people] say true healing requires honest confrontation, and that can be seen on a macro scale with America and the things that have been swept under the rug, whether it be with the native Americans or slavery, or whatever holocaust that's happened on this soil.

How many films are there about friendships between teenagers? And how many projects are there dealing with friendships among adults? True friendships - really dealing with the intimacy behind what happened then, and how long you've known each other, and the wounds that haven't healed. That's what [About Alex] film is about.

Far too often scripts are being written with race in mind, but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to any conversation on race. I applaud Jesse [Zwick] for having the courage to say, this [About Alex] just a story about friends, and they could be anyone. There's no specific color that forces a relationship to be discussed in any other manner.

When I think about 1999, I think about being a 19-year-old kid, and I think about my attitude and behavior just toward women with respect objectifying them.

I think Jesse [Zwick] is part of a new generation of director, because we'd be kidding ourselves if we did not acknowledge that there is this unsaid rule that the hero looks a certain way.

The good thing about a film, or at least the films I've been a part of, is, no matter what happens in the end, you do the premiere and everyone's excited. You don't remember the rough times.

I can't remember ever having a conversation about the definition of consent when I was a kid. I knew that no meant no, but that's it.

This is the psychosis of being a human being - the things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis that make us who we are and that sometimes we have to get on the couch and talk out.

Because we are a conglomerate of our experiences - you take away any experience and you take away a piece of identity. You take away a piece of identity and we don't really know who we are.

Self-esteem and identity are very fragile things. I think a lot of times, those are the motivations for why people do take their own lives - not being seen, not being recognized, not being loved, not feeling supported, not feeling understood.

I don't want to be a leader that is one-dimensional or two-dimensional because he's not willing to be open.

I think it takes a lot of courage to be able to direct a film. If you have that courage and that vision together, and you pick the cast that you believe will achieve your vision, you win.

A lot of those old ideas are dying with the people who created them, and there's this new generation of filmmaker that's saying, "We're in this together, these are issues that we all deal with, let's just present issues to screen without bias and figure out what the audience has to say about them."

I want young people to ask me if I'm serious. Our young people have been lied to and misled for so long. When I stand on this soapbox, I want young people to ask me that because once they know I'm serious, they'll be willing to ride with me.

I need to take toward a lot of things that will refine me and make me better suited for leading anyone out of any place of injustice to a place of justice.

When an artist becomes complacent, he dies.

And when I say dominate, I just mean work harder than anyone else could possibly work at it.

Every day I'm reassessing what I've been taught against what I see, and the man I need to be if I'm going to call myself a leader of anybody.

I think it's like the '60s - we're going to see another revolution in film where these new filmmakers stand up and take ownership of what film is and mould it into what they want.

My mother always tells me, "Fear isn't from God," and I believe that. But sometimes, I wonder whether I'll be able step into the shoes that God has prepared for me.