Cristela Alonzo Quotes

I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened.

If you think about where I'm from, I'm not supposed to be singing in the first place. I'm not supposed to be alive right now.

When I was a child, I saw in the news that a person from Belitung had done well in sports in Jakarta, and I just couldn't imagine that it was possible for someone from here to become famous, and it's still very isolated out here.

There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty.

I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job.

We had to make ends meet. My parents were divorced, so my father wasn't really in my life. We grew up like most kids, just wanting things.

You don't have to be the biggest to beat the biggest.

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.

I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up.

I just grew up a poor black kid in Alabama with a single mom and two brothers.

I came from a very poor family. And I was able to rise up and actually win an Academy Award. And if I can do it, then any kid can do it.

My dad was just a little trailer trash white dude that worked his tail off, didn't have a dad. He started working at 14, didn't get to play sports. He dedicated his life to his kids to let us live our dreams.

I didn't grow up in the slums or anything that dire, but I know what it is to grow up without having money or being able to support family.

I like being the underdog. I like turning around and shutting people up when they tell me I can't.

I wanted to be an endurance athlete from a young age. I remember being in a careers class at school and saying I wanted to be a professional athlete and the teacher replying, 'You're not going to make it; it's not possible.'

Art thrives on obstacles. The bigger the obstacle, the better the drama.

I came from a town of about 2,000 people with one stop light, and I was told that nothing I ever wanted to do, I would succeed in.

I come from the ghetto in Brazil, where we don't have a lot of career opportunities, so I'm sure my family and people who live there never imagined that one day I'd become a singer and be able to perform at an event like the Olympics.

I just love the idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, whether it's the success of 'Cool Runnings,' which is the success of four guys from Jamaica who had never seen snow, or whether it's my success, just as a human being.

I know a lot of people say they always believed they could get into F1, but I didn't quite believe that, certainly not when I was 7 and maybe not until I was 14. It was always so far away.

I had nothing - I come from nothing - but I am something, and I will continue to be something.

I've been fighting since I was a child, fighting to get out of my circumstances.

Being sporty at heart, I've wanted to learn football since I was a child. But I never got the chance because, growing up, my family didn't have the finances for extra-curricular activities.