Lucas Moura Quotes

I lived in a bad neighborhood. I knew so many things a boy shouldn't know. I did so many things a boy shouldn't do.

Me, myself, I was a part of gang bangin', you know what I'm sayin'?

It's very hard to be cut off in Glasgow because it's such a small city. You know, we have the highest rate of per-capita imprisonment, certainly in Britain, maybe in Europe. We have a very high murder rate here. So most people will know someone who's been to prison.

I am rather in favour of dealing with teenage hooliganism.

In the city, a lot of crime happens, a lot of violence happens from time to time.

I have seen bright young people all over this country in an ocean surrounded by the sharks of drugs, alcohol, violence, homicide, suicide, AIDS and teenage pregnancy while we argue over whose values we are going to teach.

Whether it is kids carrying knives because they are in gangs or kids carrying knives because they are afraid of gangs, it is the gang culture that underpins the problem.

I've seen people get robbed, seen people get shot with my own eyes, for pointless petty crimes.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children.

By bringing about a rational drug policy, we'd be freeing up a lot of resources for real crime. Drug disputes would get played out with courts rather than with guns. So it would make this country a much better place overnight.

I come from where Mike Tyson came from. I come from right across the street from Jay-Z. I didn't have a pond in my backyard. I saw violence.

Many areas of Los Angeles have gang problems.

The part of London where I grew up has the highest crime rates in the country.

If it wasn't for prison, I was in a bad way.

I grew up in a bookless house with a father and brother who have spent most of their lives in prison, psychiatric hospitals, or living rough, and a mother who has spent her life slaving and scrimping to pay the bills, living a nervous and troubled life.

People want to kill people because they don't want them out on the street again.

I learned a lot about the law at Harvard Law School, but no one taught me about why a 20-year old black male in a tough neighborhood feels like he needs to be armed. Nobody taught me about what attracts kids to join gangs.... It is difficult to stand in judgment of other human beings without understanding human beings.

A lot of friends I went to school with were criminals.

Most incarcerated women have stories that are similar to mine. They suffered great trauma as children.

I was dyslexic and uneducated and left school at 14. I grew up in Finsbury Park, which was a pretty bad place where you had to fight and be beaten. It was just a constant roundabout of violence.

Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.

One of my younger homies, he went to jail, and some people came to me and were like, "Bail him out," and I said no. Why would I bail him out? He's going to prison. Let him sit and get some time served. You want to be crazy, but you don't want to go to jail. You want to shoot people, but you don't want to kill people. That's such a misleading thing.

I'm from the street. We all know that.