Marlon Wayans Quotes

I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both.

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

Growing up in the streets of Bed-Stuy, it was hard, yo.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

My first boxing experience came at around 14. There was always confrontation in the area I grew up in. My mentality, I'll be honest, was if someone tries it with me, I want to be able to knock them out.

Growing up, I think I was arrested 20-odd times by the Boston police. The good news is that I've been able to use those experiences in a lot of my roles, and that has been a blessing.

I lived the street life for a minute; I lost a lot of friends.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

I was a pretty scrappy, tough kid; I got in all sorts of fights at school. I defended myself - boys didn't mess with me. But as one of seven children, you have to fight for everything anyway.

The environment I was raised in, you had to, to survive.

I wasn't a bad kid. I was a good kid. But I had gotten in a lot of fights 'cause in the neighborhood I grew up in, that wasn't equated with bad behavior almost. I mean, we'd fought like it was another game. 'You wanna play stick ball today?' 'Nah, let's go fight.'

I grew up in the Bronx. The Bronx teaches you to survive. It's like, 'Bring it on!'

And when we used to play and fight in the streets in Brooklyn and I would get hurt or something, my mother would always come out and save me. So that sort of postponed the inevitable about getting a good beating, without having somebody to come and save you.

We lived in a ghetto. I could have pretended I was hard or tough and not a square. I wound up not getting in trouble. I don't consider myself to be especially wise, but I will say that it's pretty clear that some people want to get out and some people don't. I wanted out.

I'm from the street. We all know that.

Growing up in the projects, I've been around music all my life. Marvin Gaye, everything man.

For me, basketball was always about survival because I was just trying to get out the hood, right? When I got to Chicago, I'm like, 'I'm just trying to survive, and anybody I got to step on or break, so be it.'

We grew up in the Rose Park section of Salt Lake City. It's a good neighborhood but a tough one, on the poor side but proud. Sports are big. You learn to fight.

I started very young... I learned my martial arts first in the street. There were always fights. That's the culture in Brazil.

I fought from the time I was eight years old, sometimes three, four fights a night. We did it to eat, and we did it because we were just tough kids.

At 19 years old, when I came out of St. John's, I was fresh out the 'hood. I was fresh out of Queensbridge.

I grew up in a rough neighborhood, so I fought a lot. Even when I was wrestling, if I lost a match, I always thought, That guy would never beat me in a fight.

I was an only child, a hard-case kid, in a rough neighborhood. But I always fought my battles.

But I was born in the real world, I'm from the streets.

Sometimes you found yourself in conflict or within an area where there's conflict. Some days you just find yourself in danger. Sometimes these things mould you and that's what I mean about hostile environments.