Michael Dyson Quotes

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

The economic dimension is very clear. I was at a dinner party, a mother got up, who's a very distinguished scientist, and said she had to get home and help her daughter with her homework. The two waiters, their faces changed. They were working their second jobs, they couldn't get home to help their kids with homework.

People who have picture-perfect upbringings and lives tend not to be funny. I don't think they write from a position of pain.

In Manipur, mostly the top player's family background is very poor. I also come from a poor family, so we have to do more hard work to get money and a better life.

I come from humble beginnings myself.

I'm not writing about the 1 percent of people who have this fairy-tale, amazing life. I'm writing about people like me, who maybe had a rough childhood.

More often than not, people who are poor... are right where they should be.

People go through so much in life - financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally. So I don't look at the ups and downs as anything but a negligible area.

I made 'Free Game' based on personal experiences, what I been through, my life, exposing people to the fact that I'm in the streets.

I worked with women who were nurses and workers, women who worked in hotels, janitors who basically cleaned buildings, worked two jobs just to support their family. And, it really taught me a lot about how much opportunity I had to do anything I wanted to with my life.

I just had different circumstances than most players, and I think that has been an advantage - maybe I carry a little chip on my shoulder with just how tough it was for my parents to overcome some of those financial situations.

Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless.

Nobody would deny that if someone was a billionaire in 1962, his billions are going to affect all of his descendants. The reverse is also true. The lack of education, material, and finances for a slave are going to affect the descendants of that individual as well.

I come from a working class background, it wasn't easy for me at all, but I worked hard.

It just doesn't go with my story to be a first round pick, because I had to grind my whole life.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.

You can't kid the public. When they see me they see I'm just a kid off a council estate - no more, no less.

I go through the same trials and tribulations as anyone else.

Why am I not just some old woman ranting in a room? I think because what I say connects with people's truths.

If I see something in somebody, if it's something similar in my shot, I feel like it's the same type of thing in life. People who tell you what to do all the time or have all the answers for you, it's like, 'OK, whatever.' But if you've gone through something in life, you can speak to something a little more.

I'm gonna write a book. I'm going to explain over the past 30 years of my life of things that I endured and what I went through. And when I do, I promise you with everything that I am that people will not believe me. But I have factual proof of everything that has happened to me, and I have been able to overcome.

I used to work in a clothes store, played cricket for money, did photo shoots. It was that period of struggle which gave me the experience to be an actor. The emotions have to come from the raw material of life.

I think there's strength in seeing somebody who's not necessarily winning at life... to make something that makes people feel like they've won when they hear it.

If you don't have money or you come from a background that doesn't have money, it's harder to achieve your ambition in life. It's not that you can't, but it becomes harder. Inequality is one of the worst things that can exist in our society, so I am interested in those kind of things.