Richard Thompson Quotes

When I moved to Seattle, I was hanging out with kids who had done drugs, had sex a million times. I look at them now and realize their childhood was taken away.

Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society.

That’s why these kids get into so much trouble. They don’t have anything to do.

Gang members have invariably grown up in broken, chaotic homes, often experiencing domestic violence; they have truanted from school and many have been formally excluded; and they live in neighbourhoods where worklessness, addiction and crime are rife.

I used drugs as a social activity; a way to have fun with friends.

Young people, for whom I should have been a role model and an uncle, duplicated my worst habits and died as a result.

Yes, there was nothing else to do to get you high. I mean, there was, but white kids didn't hear about it.

Our young people are out on the streets looking for parties, a place to dance, looking for a scene. No institutions are providing them with alternatives, fun things to do that don't necessarily have alcohol at the center.

I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.

I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents.

The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.

I have seen bright young people all over this country in an ocean surrounded by the sharks of drugs, alcohol, violence, homicide, suicide, AIDS and teenage pregnancy while we argue over whose values we are going to teach.

We have found that equivocation by the parents has contributed to eventual drug experimentation

No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.

It was very difficult when I was young because there are problems with violence, gangs, guns, drugs - a criminal life. I had friends that choose a criminal life. Some of them are in prison, and some of them are dead. They chose the bad way.

I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was hanging out with comedians in their thirties. I moved out of home and had some real lows.

The gang culture - tragically - has for some young people become the only source of stability in their lives.

The truth is that those who join gangs - more often than not they are young men in their later teens - often do come from the most difficult family backgrounds, from an environment where they feel neglected and unwanted. Gang membership can bring a perverse sense of belonging which they may not have ever got at home.

The motivations for using drugs, often it's pretty obvious and common: you know, peer pressure. You know, kids are struggling growing up.

Gangs are formed by kids who want love.

You don't hear about me being at parties, going out and gettin' drunk.

When friends started smoking at 16 or drinking at 18, I made myself not follow. No lads' holidays, all that stuff.

A lot of friends I went to school with were criminals.

On my block, I had all these guys coming in and out of jail. When I was 13, I was playing outside my house, and one of those guys came across the street and started cussing me out, wanting to fight me. People knew I trained kickboxing and would put the gloves on with my friends, so that made me a target.

It's tough for kids to stay focused if they don't have something to get them off the streets... that's where the kids can get into the bad things.