Ryan Leaf Quotes

I have spent much of my adult life flinching with pain as I tried to pull out the threads that bound the shadows of my past to me.

My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history.

Until I really dealt with a lot of the demons in my life - the fear and self-doubt and unresolved issues with my old man - I could never feel fulfilled and happy. I would wake up in the morning and feel bad.

There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

I know some people that have gone through serious struggles. People that were close to me, and I've seen some terrible things about people who lose it. So I think that type of pain is something that's human and that, actually, can help us look at ourselves a little bit.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

I've had so many horrible things happen in my life since I did 'Home Improvement' that it's worried me about doing comedy because - how do I say this - I'm a much darker person than I was.

It is our interpretation of the past, our limiting beliefs, and our undigested pain that stop us from being able to move forward with clear direction.

I believe my own demons would have caught up with me regardless of my race and regardless of whether I worked at 'The Times.'

Thematically, I like playing with the ideas of stuff that you try to bury, and you think will go away, but instead you carry it with you until it becomes crippling. And sometimes you have to look back and deal with some stuff in order to truly move forward.

I look at something like 'Short Term 12,' and that character has a lot of pain, and I wouldn't have known how to portray that if I hadn't experienced pain myself.

'Creep,' unfortunately, was one of my true stories.

I don't think any one relationship in my life has wrecked me. I think I am a collection of wrecks.

Trauma and pain and suffering can be the very thing that dislodges a person from themselves both in awful ways and larger ways that force one to reckon with one's own life.

In life, when what has happened happens to you, you don't digest it.

I have some great stories. But I am also very human, and I suffered an awful lot.

It's been my experience with damaged people: they don't wake up every day and wallow in the bad things that have happened to them.

Everybody fights demons. Some are worse than others.

If you don't work through the things that haunt you early, they'll stay with you for the rest of your life.

Unhappy and unsettled childhood helps in writing.

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

Every present anger derives from past weakness.

Don't take your bad shots home with you.

If you don't make peace with your past it will keep showing up in your present.