I thought a lot about the concept of cultural dysphoria, and how that — Amandla Stenberg

"I think that as a black girl you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn’t accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features, or that you shouldn’t have a voice, or that you aren’t smart"

"The line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange is always going to be blurry"

"I think already, at age 12, I was like, Yeah, people are racist. Why are y’all surprised?"

"When I reflect on it, I don’t remember being very upset about it. I remember feeling that I don’t give a flying f**k what these racist people think of me. I think bigots don’t really bother me"

"It wasn’t until I started living in other places that I realized that growing up with the backdrop of a mountainscape is not everyone’s experience"

"A lot of my adolescence was defined by being here. I feel like the first time I really experienced freedom and autonomy was here, so I think I probably fell in love with New York and knew it was the place I wanted to live when I was 15 or 16. Then I had a series of unsuccessful attempts to move here that were thwarted by different things"