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My kids are nothing like I remember black kids being when I was a kid.
Kenya Barris -
I'm a huge fan of writing for people rather than writing and then trying to wedge people in. I'd love to know who the people are before I can write for them. For me, it's a much more organic way to create characters.
Kenya Barris
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My father lost a lung in a chemical accident at General Motors, and after a while, he got a settlement that sort of changed all of our lives and moved us from, what we say, 'ashy to classy' in some aspects.
Kenya Barris -
I love Meryl Streep.
Kenya Barris -
I wanted to be a doctor, because I grew up on 'Cosby.'
Kenya Barris -
You can have good times with anyone, but it's really different and much more interesting when you look at how you get through the bad times with someone.
Kenya Barris -
I would say any creative person has that: you can't just force a topic. Whether you're a painter, you want to do a cartoon. Anything. Something may come up that's not your style or suited to what you are working on at the moment. So you file it away and hopefully find a place for it.
Kenya Barris -
My wife is a doctor, and we had a decent life financially. My kids were going to nice schools and had nannies. We weren't rich, but we were better off than I was growing up. And I looked around, and I was like, 'Who are these people?' It was the opposite of what I remembered growing up.
Kenya Barris
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I love Donald Glover.
Kenya Barris -
The acknowledgement and celebration of Juneteenth as an American and possibly international holiday is something that I would put in the life goals column for me.
Kenya Barris -
I want to make sure I don't leave any money for my kids, so I'm going to spend it all on clothes.
Kenya Barris -
The PC way of handling culture has been to not talk about it. But we should be talking about it.
Kenya Barris -
When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.'
Kenya Barris -
My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.
Kenya Barris
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I believe comedy is a really good lens to filter serious issues through. If people are laughing, they don't necessarily realize until they stop laughing that they just took something in that's going to start a conversation.
Kenya Barris -
I feel like money is an interesting thing when you don't come from it.
Kenya Barris -
You get a little older, and you start understanding the world in a different way and what you don't have control over and what you do have control over.
Kenya Barris -
I want to start really developing more on the film side.
Kenya Barris -
I don't necessarily believe that 'The Cosby Show' should disappear as a cultural reference, but it is. That's sad to me. I understand why. He was a man who possibly did some really bad things, and he should be punished beyond a doubt. But that show, and the impact it had not just on black culture, but culture, was amazing.
Kenya Barris -
Of all the 'Black-ish' characters, Zoey is most like my daughter, who goes to U.S.C.
Kenya Barris
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ABC has a general policy that you can't show images of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Kenya Barris -
I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.
Kenya Barris -
Writers' rooms are terrifying. You take someone whose never done this before, and this is their life's dream that is about to happen or not about to happen - that is an amazing amount of pressure to have.
Kenya Barris -
I set out to tell my story, which is based on my family. Dr. Cosby told his story in 'The Cosby Show.' The comparisons stop there in terms of my creation of the show. We just both happen to have black fathers at the center of it.
Kenya Barris