Jordan Peele Quotes

Part of what horror is, is taking risks and going somewhere that people think you’re not supposed to be able to go, in the name of expressing real-life fears.

A true friend will be there to congratulate you when you win an Academy Award and will also be there to hold your hair back when you're puking your guts out in the bathroom stall two minutes later! So keep your eyes peeled for the hair-holding kind.

Peel the apple in your hand, girl, not the one on the tree, Lini’s thin voice seemed to whisper in her ear. Tears are for after; they just waste time before.

Whatever you have forgotten, you can remember. Whatever you have buried you can unearth. If you are willing to look deep into your own nature, if you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life, you will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think.

The power of story is greater than power of conversation in a way.

I mean, I love gay romance, I’m into the idea of werewolves and I’m a fan of the miracle of birth. All of those facts are separately true. But knowing gay werewolf pregnancy is a thing that’s out there is nearly tied with Jordan Peele movies on the list of Scary Shit I’ll Never Get

When I'm writing a first draft I'm constantly reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

I’m a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you’re accusing them of not thinking. But when you tell a story, and you draw them in through allowing them to see through the eyes of a different person, and when you can affect their feelings and emotions — whether it's making them laugh, or making them scared, or making them scream, or making them cheer — then you have them on a starting point, already, to think about why they had those visceral reactions.

Dr. Jordan sits across from me. He smells of shaving soap, the English kind, and of ears; and of the leather o his boots. It is a reassuring smell and I always look forward to it, men that wash being preferable in this respect to those that do not What he has put on the table today is a potato, but he has not yet asked me about it, so it is just sitting there between us. I don't know what he expects me to say about it, except that I have peeled a good many of them in my time, and eaten them too, a fresh new potato is a joy with a little butter and salt, and parsley if available, and even the big old ones can bake up very beautiful; but they are nothing to have a long conversation about. Some potatoes look like babies' faces, or else like animals, and I once saw one that looked like a cat. But this one looks just like a potato, no more and no less. Sometimes I think that Dr. Jordan is a little off in the head. But I would rather talk with him about potatoes, if that is what he fancies, than not talk to him at all.

Jordan Peele’s hit racial horror flick, Get Out.

Jordan's Alley, now part of the West End, is still the poorest section of the city, still overwhelmingly black; the rate of neighborhood-school students qualifying for free and reduced lunch is by far the highest in the city, at 98.17 percent. But as Sweet Sue and Mother Ingram described the community the way it was when the Muse family migrated there, I realized I had to look beyond the peeling paint and the sagging porches. I sensed there were plenty of rich histories waiting to be unearthed on the tongues of octogenarians, in old scrapbooks, and in remote court files. I just had to dig.

That late bloomer Abraham has been hanging around his father’s tent for far too many years, to put it mildly. But if God’s call comes, it is better to heed it, no matter how late (and in that, there is real hope, for those who believe that they have delayed too long). Abraham leaves his country, and his people, and his father’s household, and journeys out into the world, following the still small voice; following God’s call. And it is no call to happiness. It is the complete bloody catastrophe we previously described: famine, war, and domestic strife. All this might make the reasonable individual (not to mention Abraham himself) doubt the wisdom of listening to God and conscience, and of adopting the responsibility of autonomy and the burden of adventure. Better to be lying in a hammock, devouring peeled grapes in the security of Dad’s tent. What calls you out into the world, however—to your destiny—is not ease. It is struggle and strife. It is bitter contention and the deadly play of the opposites. It is probable—inevitable—that the adventure of your life will frustrate and disappoint and unsettle you, as you heed the call of conscience and shoulder your responsibility and endeavor to set yourself and the world right. But that is where the deep meaning that orients you and shelters you is to be found. That is where things will line up for you; where things that have been scattered apart and broken will come together; where purpose will manifest itself; where what is proper and good will be supported and what is weak and resentful and arrogant and destructive will be defeated. That is where the life that is worth living is to be eternally found—and where you can find it, personally, if only you are willing.

One question that Black and minority creators often face is, Must our stories always be about the struggle against oppression? The answer is a resounding No. The only imperative in Black stories is the same as non-Black stories--to convey our human struggles. Some of our struggles are with society, but others are with the self, with our families, our communities. All of those are Black stories too.

And the reason I started crying was because I realized how big and insurmountable seeming systemic racism is. It involves so many different perpetrators, it involves us, the victims, and it comes in so many different forms... A big part of the Sunken Place, to me, is the silencing of our voice, the silencing of our screams, what we as a culture did to Colin Kaepernick for using his voice, the silencing of that voice, or the attempted silencing of that voice. And the beauty of what many great civil rights leaders, specifically Martin Luther King Jr., taught us is that our voice is the weapon we have against violence, against oppression, against hatred. So, the silencing of that voice, it comes in prison, it comes in athletes, it comes in the lack of representation of Black people in horror movies, and any part of this industry.

Then the cops come... That to me means all of the movie with all of this absurdity culminates to an absurdity that is so grounded it's actually real. It shows you that all of these other choices are not that crazy anymore. No matter whether or not the audience bought any of the decisions I've made--they could've viewed the brain transplants or the hypnotizing as ridiculous and fantastical--they have to acknowledge that the cop car showing up is a real threat to Chris's life. And maybe that makes them go back and reevaluate whether the other decisions were that far-fetched after all.

Jesus better keep his little bitch mouth shut

WHITE BOY #4 There is an enormous tragedy at work, though I don’t think it’s the one we might think it is. (thumbs his chin as the Death Note detective music starts playing)

But I always imagined that everyone’s Sunken Place would look different, a manifestation of our own personal horrors.

from pure fantasy and fairy tales to historical fiction, sci-fi, slapstick comedy, illustrated historical essays, action-adventure, and much more. Novelist, screenwriter, and comics author Neil Gaiman has a similarly expansive range, from journalism and essays on art to a fiction oeuvre encompassing both stories that can be read to (or by) the youngest readers as well as psychologically complex examinations of identity that have enthralled mainstream adult audiences. Jordan Peele is not a comics creator, but the writer and first-time director of the extraordinarily unique surprise hit Get Out struck a similar note when he credited comedy writing for his skill at timing information reveals in a horror film. “In product development,” Taylor and Greve concluded, “specialization can be costly.

Probably better to shoot than arrest her, really; dead women file no lawsuits.

Zelda knows he’s not happy, but he won’t make a fuss, because he understands, just like Zelda, that sometimes the best monster hunters are monsters themselves.

Then two years ago at a Florida hospital, a newborn unfolds his jaw and eats half a nurse’s face.

Five, six, seven arms reaching out into the darkness. Finally, one touches the bag, and all the arms seize upon it like wild animals dragging away a carcass.

I swear, there must be some genetic well of low self-esteem that makes humans look for something, anything, to worship. Give us a glimpse of a more powerful, sentient entity and some of us will offer up our wombs as incubators.

My sister was a fool in the particular way that only someone who was too smart to be such a fool could be a fool.

is he okay? of course not dumb hearts are supposed to go on the inside that’s like the number one thing about hearts

The local megachurch has them everywhere, trying to scare people into buying their pastor another beach house.

I view horror as catharsis through entertainment. It’s a way to work through your deepest pain and fear—but for Black people that isn’t possible, and for many decades wasn’t possible, without the stories being told in the first place.

Then two years ago at a Florida hospital, a newborn unfolds his jaw and eats half a nurse’s face. And you think, it’s Miami, it happens, until the video comes in.

What the fuck am I even talking about? Grad school is bad for the brain.

I have a condition. I have a condition with an ugly name. One of the symptoms of this ugly condition is that I am afraid, profoundly, that I will be abandoned. The doctor says this fear is irrational, even though I have been abandoned before.

Us and them. Those born on this island and those who crowned it the jewel of an empire.

Has it seemed at all like shit’s just kind of run its course? Problems are obvious and no one’s that invested in fixing them? No new discoveries, no new ideas. All the new arguments are the same as the old arguments. Lost the plot with art and entertainment. Everything’s AI or a remix or remaster or expansion of the same five IPs.

This is why they fear us. They live with their secret shame, their secret terror that we might do to them what they’ve done to us. We don’t depend on them, don’t need them. We ‘don’t know our place,’ and they see that we’re a well-armed militia.

They thought that we were too young to understand, but children knew. We learned the lesson early, felt it down to our bones: Of all the tools of oppression, fear was the cruelest

Know your place. Stay in your place. But if you build your place into something nice, they want to take it from you. All they needed was an excuse.

The flattening of the human experience in the last . . . I don’t know, fifty years, can point to the simulation winding down.” “Flattening?” Kam asked. “Has it seemed at all like shit’s just kind of run its course? Problems are obvious and no one’s that invested in fixing them? No new discoveries, no new ideas. All the new arguments are the same as the old arguments. Lost the plot with art and entertainment. Everything’s AI or a remix or remaster or expansion of the same five IPs.

Over time, I forgot that beneath the playground of passing cars was the disturbed burial ground of people who thought they were free.