Bobby Kotick Quotes

Of all the advantages which come to any young man ... poverty is the greatest.

Some people are born with very little; some are fortunate enough to have it all. When I grew up, we didn't have much. I had to hustle to get what I wanted... but I had that hunger for more. I didn't always make the right choices, but I learned from my mistakes.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

When my trust fund ran out, I panicked. I have a lot of admiration for the kids who come to the big city with nothing and make it.

I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.

Back at the beginning of my career, I had to make all these sacrifices - sleeping in a car on nights where I'd wrestle in front of 20,000 people - because I wasn't making any money.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

This whole thing about winning and losing is muddy waters. But I can remember, as a young actor, just walking around this city and not being able to get arrested.

It's so funny looking back, but my so-called overnight success actually took 15 years. I remember when I didn't have any money, and my only car was mom's Hyundai.

My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house.

I learned a lot in those first years in Miami, while struggling just for survival, by observing my father's fortitude.

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

When I started out, I struggled, and I was broke a lot. But I'm glad I struggled, and I'm glad I was broke a lot.

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.

I didn't finish the stories until we went to the Philippines and I got malaria. I couldn't work and I didn't have any money, but I had seven stories. So I wrote three or four more.

But life is tough and if you're creative, it's tougher.

We come from a tough, working class background, so we're very tight.

I know the true meaning of getting by by the skin of my teeth; I do. It doesn't matter whether you've got money or you haven't, whether you're famous or not. This is the case for all women, actually; you have to carry on. You always have to carry on. And you can, because you have to.

I lived for two years with six girls in an apartment that was built for three people, and it had no heat. We would sleep in our coats and in sleeping bags. And it was great.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

I did just about anything to pay the rent for a while.

The fact that my father set out on his own to build Hyatt - a business the family was not in and a business he was learning about as he was building it - is instructive.