Estelle Quotes

I've been fighting since I was a child, fighting to get out of my circumstances.

I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.

I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me.

I had to fight my whole life to break out of my circumstances. That's just part of my makeup.

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.

I grew up in low-income areas and I've seen people take negative energy and just accept it. They give into and end up living a pretty rough life. At a young age, I just knew I wasn't going to give in because I didn't want to end up being one of those people in the neighborhood that didn't have anything and lived a hard life.

Good Charlotte, for us, comes from a place of youth for us, back when we were struggling and fighting for every inch, just trying to get by.

My whole career's been an underdog's.

It doesn't matter what background you come from; it doesn't matter what your circumstances are - you can survive.

Who can't relate to a story of a dreamer who, against all odds, is going to make something of himself that is completely unexpected?

I just love the idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, whether it's the success of 'Cool Runnings,' which is the success of four guys from Jamaica who had never seen snow, or whether it's my success, just as a human being.

I was one of those guys who wasn't supposed to make it in this league.

People only look at you and say, 'You are black and you are from the banlieue,' and all the doors are closed. I had the desire to be something else. If I see a door that is a little open, I will find a way to get through.

As in the rankest soil the most beautiful flowers are grown, so in the dark soil of poverty the choicest flowers of humanity have developed and bloomed.

I want to be an example of a guy who made something of himself out of nothing. A guy who overcame the odds of a tough childhood, who worked hard, who didn't let his surroundings get the best of him and lead him to jail or the graveyard. Where I ended up - being a comedian, a TV star, and a movie actor - might be unique, but my story is not.

I didn't finish college; my parents didn't graduate college - we didn't have a pot to piss in. I'm from Newark, New Jersey. I had to work. I didn't think it would be possible for me to be an artist without having a job.

I came up from a difficult background.

A misfit like me getting anywhere in Hollywood as I somehow have, seemed, certainly at the time of 'Spanking The Monkey,' kind of out of reach, or not a very realistic take.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I'd had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

I was an outsider... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up.

The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.

I'm living proof that you can make it out of the ghetto.

If I can go through what I've been through and do a television show with my son and then be a boy from the hood making records for the people I make records for, that's reality.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

I've always felt like the underdog, and I'm comfortable with that label.