A Quote by Kenya Barris

My kids did not know that Obama was the first black president. I felt like I needed to tell them because I felt like, 'How could you not know that?' But for the ones who didn't know, he was basically the only president they knew.
I don't know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn't feel like a line to me. You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that's, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
I think I would always tell school kids that, you know, they'd say, "When did you get interested in politics?" I said, "Just very young." Maybe it was because President [J.F.] Kennedy was the first Irish-Catholic president."
I'm getting asked a lot, 'You don't have kids, so how do you know how to act like a mother?' I know nothing could compare, and I haven't had that experience, but when my niece was born, I felt like I would jump in front of a car and die for this little person I didn't even know yet.
I'm a kid from Chicago. I know what it was like to see Obama become president. We felt the tectonic plates of the world shift.
If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn't you feel that way now that he's President Obama? You know there's something wrong with the kind of job he's done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.
This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.
Sometimes, people mistake fire in the belly for too much pepperoni pizza the night before. They make a great speech and people come up to them and tell them, "You could be president." And the next thing you know, they're running, not because they really ought to or have any shot at doing it, but because they have, you know, a handful of people that tell them they are looking at the next president.
I don't want us to have a president that we constantly have to be explaining to our kids, I know that's what the president did but you shouldn't do that. I don't want that. We actually had a president like that not long ago. It was really bad.
Have you ever felt a potential love for someone? Like, you don't actually love them and you know you don't, but you know you could. You realise that you could easily fall in love with them. It's almost like the bud of a flower, ready to blossom but it's just not quite there yet. And you like them a lot, you really do. You think about them often, but you don't love them. You could, though. You know you could.
Well, it has to do with very deep things, because it might be that imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. But it is something that when I made "The Devil Wears Prada" it was the first time in my life, 30 years of making movies, that a man came up and said I know how you felt. I know how you felt. I have a job like that. People understand.
President Obama released his tax returns. It turns out he made $900,000 less in 2011 then he did in 2010. You know what that means? Even Obama is doing worse under President Obama.
When I was growing up, I was told you could be anything you want to be, but I didn't really believe that because you couldn't be president. Like, I knew that; we never had a black president.
I know you only get one chance to make a first impression in a city - and I was so disappointed in myself for how that first season in New York had gone. It felt like a blown opportunity. It felt like I'd cemented my reputation in the opposite way that I'd wanted to. Selfish. Not a leader. Not a winning player.
Kids will tell me 'oh I want to be like you when I grow up,' you know. I just thought 'nah, don't be like me, be like you,' because first of all they don't really know me but second of all I understand what they're trying to say but I just let them know - be like you.
I never felt I was incapable of succeeding because I felt confident I could always learn what I needed to know.
I don't think I would have made 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood' had Trump not been president. I felt so desperately like we needed to see a model of masculinity that was kind and loving and emotional, and could be the antidote to this president that we had.
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