Alex Rocco Quotes

I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.

I'm not a fugitive anymore. Never will be in the future. After spending five years in jail, you learn your lesson. I never want to return there.

I'm eternally grateful to the penal system in California for saving my life.

America is the land of the second chance - and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

I was heading in a self destructive direction. My priority wasn't together, wasn't in order. So me getting locked up was actually a blessing for me. It helped for me to see the light. Once you get the rug snatched from under you - I had my career and family snatched from me, and I was forced to just sit there in that box for three years and think about what I did and how selfish I was, it made me really see things with new eyes, like, hold up, why was I doing that? What the hell was I thinking about? I gotta change. Something's got to give. I can't ever come back in this place again.

I feel like my life has been a series of miracles. I was in every sense a lost cause.

I was 17 when I left the small Maine town where I'd grown up. I wanted to do something I thought was important with my life, so I headed to California and didn't look back.

I could have easily gone down the wrong path and dropped out of school, but I was given a second chance.

I asked myself, 'What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to be like everyone else or are you going to do what's right?' I just made a decision. I said, 'It's time to grow up. It's time to start living for the Lord, do things the right way.' I accepted the Lord, and it changed my life.

My whole story is just about me having a second chance.

One day between takes on the 'Oz' set, I went into one of the cells and laid down and dozed off. When I woke up, I thought I was back in a federal pen. But I did my time, and today no one is more of a free man than Chuck Zito.

I was headed in the wrong direction. I didn't think I'd make it to 21. My Uncle Chuck saved my life. He was a graphic designer, and he gave me my first sketchbook. In the front, he wrote, 'Wear it like your underwear.'

Most people are fascinated by what I did as a teenager, but when I look back at my life, I don't think very much about those years. I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.

I went to prison; therefore, I've been rehabilitated, and now I want to get on with my life. I have paid for what I did, end of story.

I was in jail a couple of times, and I was probably heading back there for a long time. But martial arts saved my life and some of the choices I made with it.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Going to prison actually helped save my life, I believe.

I came here from Jamaica as a kid and didn't go to school, really, never had a great education. I was a little bit bad on the street, running around, doing this, doing that, and always getting into trouble. I was completely written off, so boxing has definitely saved my life.

I never imagined that I'd be out of prison.

I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.

Choices can be made again." -Evelyn Johnson (Eaton)

You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever, the very next person who you stand behind in line or sit next to on an aeroplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you've been waiting for to fall into place.

Redemption means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong. So I think a lot of people get hooked on drugs and when they get over that addiction they go out and they try to talk to kids and they try to work in rehab centers.

I look at my life today at 69 and I think about all the things that have happened after all my imprisonment. We truly live in an amazing country, America is where you can do things and pay your debt back to society and literally change your life if you want to.

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.