- [Barack Obama] is the best thing ever to happen to black nerds. Up until Obama, it was basically Urkel and the black guy from Revenge of the Nerds - Lamar. Other than that, we had no role models. So he made us cool.
- [on being biracial] Growing up, until really last year, I don't know that I would have readily brought up my white mother to anyone. It was not something I'm embarrassed by, but to announce that was synonymous to some black people to saying, "I think I'm better than you." This whole thing has felt almost like a coming out as biracial - saying this is a thing, we exist, and this is a future.
- [on Key and Peele (2012)] I love dishing it out to everybody, and I love doing that on the show. But Keegan and I are usually perceived as African-American, and those characters are our bread and butter. Yes, we make fun of a lot of black people, but we make fun of a wide variety of black people because we don't like this idea that black people are a monolith, that there's only one type of black people.
- Keegan and I go day to day: One day we're like in an almost racial utopia, and one day that feels like we're living in the 1950s.
- [2013] I no longer answer to [the name] Key.
- [on his Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay] You're not a failure if you don't get this, but I almost didn't do it. Because I didn't believe that there was a place for me. Whoopi Goldberg and her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for Ghost (1990) was a huge inspiration to me and when I got nominated one of the first things I did was reach out and call her and thank her for telling young people who maybe doubted themselves that they can do it. So I hope that this does the same and inspires more people to use their voices.
- I learned from puppetry that you have to listen to your puppets as much as they need to listen to you. You have to have a symbiotic relationship, you have to understand one another, because all you're really doing is setting them up to blossom and to do what they do.
- Darkness and silence and fear of the unknown have haunted me. The fear of death is the big one, right? I think comedy and horror are both ways in which we deal with the existential crisis of the knowledge that the pattern of life we're so used to will one day be broken, and we don't know what will happen next.
- The division in this country comes from a lack of empathy. It comes from a denial of one another's experiences. It's not a mistake by any means that this outwardly divisive time is juxtaposed with people of color making ambitious and beautiful films, and television and art.
- [on President Donald Trump reaction to the Charlottesville riots in August 2017] To suggest there are good people who are carrying Tiki torches screaming "Jews will not replace us" and inciting violence was a really dark moment. Really sad. [2018]
- I'm such a horror nut that the genre confusion of Get Out (2017) broke my heart a little. I set out to make a horror movie, and it's kind of not a horror movie.
- I love that Hair Love (2019) is highlighting the relationship between a Black father and daughter. Matthew leads the ranks of new creatives who are telling unique stories of the Black experience. We need this.
- I don't see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie. Not that I don't like white dudes, but I've seen that movie.
- The way I look at it, I get to cast black people in my movies. I feel fortunate to be in this position where I can say to Universal, 'I want to make a $20 million horror movie with a black family.' And they say yes. I don't see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie[s].
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