Todd Haynes Quotes

From exam grading to health education to professional training to democratic participation, paths towards self-realization and success in the world are often daunting and obscure: journeys only the privileged feel confident setting off along.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

My mom was concerned that us four little black girls have a really well-balanced life. She wanted us to be around people like us, but we also went to private school and traveled all the time. Now I fit in most places because I've been most places.

I know I got to do something that's one in a million, to escape a refugee camp, to come to this country and have so many doors open for me. So I want to go back and make a difference and give motivation or hope to all the kids that never got to leave or have the privilege that I did.

I was sponsored to go to the U.S. and became a Black Eyed Peas, and now I'm paying it forward and helping other children like me.

I have always worried about who can read, who can't, who doesn't, and the great, life-altering consequences hidden within those distinctions.

I grew up in Denmark and was fortunate enough to have access to good schools and thoughtful teachers.

You never know who you're talking to. Don't limit a young student's dream, because that's how we change the world.

I'm very lucky I went to a nice school and I live in a very lovely part of London.

When I left Stockton and went to Stanford, I felt I hit the lotto. I did not think I was coming back.

Pretty much any artist that I know of that has found that mentor status, if they're generous and okay to bestow a bit of mentor-type information, it's do what you feel, not what you think.

It's really the city of Detroit that I owe the thanks to and all the people along the way, so many people that played a role in my success in giving me the dreams and aspirations to go to college and do the things that I did.

It's only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It's like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was - how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.

I feel like I've been very blessed in the sense that I've had the veracity of spirit to not be stopped and, at the same time, the protective energy and the generosity of those who have come before me, who saw something inside of me and, therefore, invited me into rooms that I would not have been inside of otherwise.

Every step on my way to becoming an artist seemed preordained. The right people were always in the right places at the right times to boost me to the next level. I was fortunate to be selected for a summer drawing class offered to teens at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County.

You see it from my area, from any area, really, so many who want to be great and have the drive, but don't have the resources. I'm very blessed that I have a family that was financially stable enough to get me to tournaments and camps and to practices so I could wrestle year-round.

I didn't have role models to look up to because there was no access to them.

Poverty will not be allowed to become a wall in the way of education.

My life could have easily gone another way. But I had this one teacher who gave me direction and got me into performing. She got me into touring with an educational play called 'The Inner Circle' along with Pedro Zamora from MTV's 'The Real World.'

Where I'm from, there ain't a lot of other options, you know what I'm saying? Entertainment or football or crime. I don't want to spread the message that all you can do is music or sport. You can be anything. Anything. That's the message I like to spread.

Me and both my brothers got permits to attend Beverly because two of my uncles and my uncle's wife all taught and coached at Beverly Hills High. But I grew up in South Central.

I get a lot of letters from people saying, 'I want to follow in your footsteps,' and I don't know how to tell people how to follow in my footsteps, because I can't give them the opportunities that I had.

I'm really proud, just seeing a lot of the kids that have been inspired by me. There's a lot of great athletes all over the world, and some of them don't have the access or opportunity to play the game of golf.

Education is the most powerful tool for everything but certainly to create opportunities for yourself, and I know that not everyone has the privilege of an education like here in America.