Issa Rae

I used to love being the class clown. I loved to make jokes and make people laugh. There was a set of students who would find it funny. But the cool students were like, 'Eeew!'

I thrive on obstacles. If I'm told that it can't be told, then I push harder.

My first web series, 'Dorm Diaries,' was a realistic mockumentary about what it was like to be black at Stanford University. I'm black and I went to Stanford. Boom. Easy.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'

I have a theory. An audience doesn't need to get wrapped up in blackness every time they see a Negro actor. And a movie doesn't have to be about race just because there's a Negro in it.

My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.