A Quote by Dee Rees

Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.' — © Dee Rees
Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.'
The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.
Kids don't say, "Wait." They say, "Wait up, hey wait up!" Because when you're little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. "Hold up. Shut up! Mum, I'll clean up. Let me stay up!" Parents, of course, are just the opposite. Everything is down. "Just calm down. Slow down. Come down here! Sit down. Put... that... down."
The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed." By looking into yourself," Zia said. "Even if you have to look into a mirror that's outside yourself to do it." "And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just someone else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so you can see yourself in it.
I'm never going to wake up and look in the mirror and think, 'Yes, I'll go out and meet people.' Most of the time, you wake up, look in the mirror, and want to give up. And that doesn't change. It isn't awful; it's just the way I feel.
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed, shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look at this!" but they don't understand, they say something like,"you say you've been influenced by Celine?" no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this!
All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us.
I think the job of art and drama is to hold a mirror up to those things and say, 'What do you think about it?'
What motivates me is the chance to improve the world in my own special way; to contribute to the fight that all artists are fighting. I want to hold the mirror up to society and help them see themselves more clearly. I also love just making people laugh.
Art is supposed to hold up a mirror to its audience and ask, 'What do you believe? What do you think? What do you feel?' and if you look at a painting and it makes you feel nothing, that's a feeling as well.
I don't need to play villains or anything like that to show people that I'm different. I just want to be a part of stories that hold up over time. Too much of this stuff is forgettable. When it comes to being an actor, I don't know how good I am but I always say this, I've never been the problem in the cast. I just want to keep that streak up and do more projects in the future, that's it.
The demonization of people who don't have a voice is particularly despicable, and the only thing we can do in our own little way is hold a mirror up to society and kind of say we're better than that.
In life, there's a ladder sometimes, and maybe at the top, there's a mirror. You take a step up, then maybe three steps down... just because you don't want to face the decloaking in the mirror.
There's a quote from Hamlet that is my guide... He tells the players not to exaggerate but to hold a mirror up to nature. Don't overdo it, don't underdo it. Do it just on the line.
I'm not trying to say I accomplished nothing, I'm just trying to say that at this point in my life, I don't want to look at what I've accomplished and hold it like it's my trophy. I've got so much more to do; I don't want to put that gold medal around my neck yet. When I accomplish ten times what I've accomplished already, I'll start thinking about that. But a better way to put it is I kind of forget about it. I do it and I forget about it. And I just work.
It's kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to a point where none of it seems real. Well, sometimes I can do that, but I don't need an hour in front of a mirror. It just happens very fast, and things start to slip away. And I just open my eyes, and I see nothing. And then I start to breathe really hard trying to see something, but I can't. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it scares me.
We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones.
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