Top 60 Dustin Lance Black Quotes

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.

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.

People are always going to disagree politically, because we all come at the law from a different perspective with different needs.

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.

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.

One of the great things about being married to my husband, who is also an impossible dreamer, is that we just do things.

I think it’s very important that, you know, gay actors get to play gay characters.

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.

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.

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.

I love Jennifer Connelly.

If you do something with acceptance and kindness, you can create a true friendship.

I probably saw ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for the first time in college.

Gay people are more powerful when they work with lesbians. We become more powerful when we’re L, G, B and T.

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.

To be gay means you are drawn to the same sex. You can be gay and abstinent. But it’s a part of who you are, an identity, not an act.

Every single person in this world is a minority in one way or another. It just depends on how you slice the pie.

I think that our view of love and family informs our work, the way we empathize with people.

We love and adore our surrogate, we speak to her and her family constantly, I’m sure our son will speak to her for the rest of his life as well.

For Coca-Cola to take a pro-diversity, pro-equality stance creates a lot of goodwill in the LGBT community.

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.

I grew up in the Mormon Church and I have a very strange relationship with that.

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.

Most of my family is still active in the Mormon Church. They live in Utah and Provo and Orem and Salt Lake City.

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.

My mom achieved so much more than the doctors said she ever would. I miss her.

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.

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.

I’m drawn to making films that in some way move the social conversation.

I think of the biopics I’ve written as exploring a more grown-up side of myself, through other characters’ lives.

I turned in a script that meant a lot to me and an executive at Warner Bros said he was disappointed in me. I took a hit of confidence and stepped away from film-making for some time.

Some people only look at the good stuff and some people only look at the bad stuff.

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.

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.’

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.

I get emotionally attached to someone if I talk to them on the street corner for five minutes.

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.

My problem is always the number of hours in a day, not the number of things I want to do.

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.

The things that I’m interested in directing are fiction, because then you’re not married to a particular reality.

I have incredibly sensitive hearing. I often hear people talking about me. Sometimes it’s amazing and sometimes you hear gossip you’d rather not.

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.

There’s a difference between fame and fame for fame’s sake.

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.

I’m industrious. Ambitious. I’m like the gay Mitt Romney… That’s a terrible thing to say.

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.

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.

There was a criticism of ‘Milk’ that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.

Tom and I have never claimed to be perfect, whatever that means in a relationship. We’re not trying to be anyone’s example. We’re living our lives and building our family and doing what we love.

I think people in the U.K. best know me as the guy who will take their picture when they run into Tom Daley. But I’m also his husband and the dad to our child.

You’re either Mormon or Southern Baptist in my family. They’re incredibly conservative and I love my family.

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.

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.

Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.

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.

Eventually my courageous Mom did something we do all too rarely. She got on a plane and she came to see me in L.A. – this place where we’d always been told sinners lived. She came to see my gay friends.

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.

We need to maybe think a little less about the science of building walls and that waste of time and energy and start to understand what is love.

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.