Shawn Kemp Quotes

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'm from Cleveland. I don't have any famous parents. I don't have any media training, I don't have a history in the industry to where I would have any preconceived notions of how I'm supposed to be.

I know that a lot of people take inspiration from the fact that I was just a common man with no film background who turned into a star.

I try and tell all the kids that I meet that hope to be amazing one day and be a professional athlete or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever they want to be. I tell them they can do all that because Tourette's won't stop them.

I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.

I never dreamed I'd be in Congress, or even in the NFL, for that matter. Well, I guess I dreamed about being in the NFL, but I didn't believe it would happen. I'm not the biggest guy. But I guess that's the story of my life.

Yonkers made me strong and made me believe in myself, because so many people would doubt you and not believe. There are people that would believe in you, but the environment was so harsh, nobody wanted you to get out, you know?

Some of the best projects to ever come out of Atari or Chuck E. Cheese's were from high school dropouts, college dropouts. One guy had been in jail.

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.

I have no regrets at all. I have done quite well for myself. I didn't have a conventional face, but I have done well, and I am proud of it.

Part of the creative journey for me was not to come up the conventional route. I didn't go through drama school. I chose not to. I came from a very working-class area, a child of Nigerian immigrants.

Sometimes you do have to bank on yourself. You do have to believe in your ideas enough to really get out there and fight for it despite what people think of some young kids from the hood.

My father came from nothing, so he believed that people could do anything if they worked hard enough. I think he liked that I chose to be an actor. Both he and my mom were totally supportive.

I'm not a pretty boy who came to town and burst out of the gate, which is a good thing, because if I was, I probably wouldn't have been good enough then. I probably wouldn't have lasted. So I was very lucky not to be pretty.

I'm just a genetic freak, but it has never stopped me from doing whatever I want to.

There were times I was underestimated a lot. It gave me a unique benefit. The expectations were so low I could blow their head off.

I'm openly gay, and I've got a major label record deal in Nashville, and it happened when I was 42 years old. It's not supposed to happen that way.

I am a five-foot six-inch, dark, ordinary-looking man. People didn't imagine that I would make it.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I'm the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

I was rejected by every agent in Australia when I was starting out. No one would represent me, because I didn't fit into a particular box, and I wasn't a trained musician or performer, but history has perhaps proven that perhaps I have something to give.

I have always had a desire to prove people that looked past me wrong, whether it was because I was a female trying to wrestle or fight in MMA or because I grew up on the wrong side of town.

For myself, I'm still little Joanna from the hood - from a small town in Poland, and I'm still having my goals, my dreams.

All I would say is it doesn't matter where you come from. Like, Jim Sheridan comes from the inner city, and he's one of the top ones, a top lad.

Life gave me a weird path to walk and it wasn't a very traditional path and that's good, I enjoyed it greatly. But I don't think that it was anybody's traditional definition of success but I really am thankful for it.

I love being the underdog. I'm cool in my dog house.