Michael Carter-Williams Quotes

I was always told that I was too small, too skinny, too slow, not tough enough, and I never ever believed what people told me.

I'm used to having a lot of criticism. It's normal. It's normal when you come from South America, when you have a country pushing very hard in your back.

Criticism is part of football. Everybody gets it at some point. I have had it, most players do.

My first couple of years in the league left me very unstable. I had some times where I played well, and I had some times were I really did not get the opportunity. After Rick Pitino gave up on me my first year, people were like, 'He can't play.' So I had to get over that hump.

In life you will always be criticised.

I'm so used to people slagging me off. Since the beginning of my career I've been told I have no talent, I can't sing and I'm a one-hit wonder.

[Detractors] are just wrong, and that's okay. They just don't see it yet. That's what I would tell myself to keep those moments of doubt, only moments.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

I think the harsh reviews helped, in that I spent way more energy in the preproduction and development. From this point of view, I'm very thankful for the harsh critics. I still think the critics were unnecessarily insulting in a lot of things, but I think it helped.

People just put out stuff that has nothing to do with me sometimes and I'm just like, "What is that?" It's here today, gone tomorrow. It don't really throw me off my path 'cause I've been doing this since I was 12.

You can't help but feel the energy of the audience - and if you feel they hate you that feels weird and dirty. But I would never want to take it too seriously. It's understandable that you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I think that's helped me survive.

Never mind what haters say, ignore them 'til they fade away.

I try to have thick skin, but every once in a while I read something that someone says about me, and it's so slanderous and moralistic and it has nothing to do with my music.

They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.

I've always been criticized, right from the beginning! Right from the very first day I was born... They said I wasn't right for the part!

It's disingenuous to say that criticism doesn't get to you or you don't hear it or that you ignore it. When everybody says, 'That's crap. I hated that,' you hear it. But it's much, much worse when they're right: when you feel that it is an absolute piece of tosh. I made the film I wanted to make, so you just have to find a way of getting over it.

I thought about all the people that told me I couldn't do it and told me I couldn't get there.

I got comments about being too small, too short, there haven't been any Asian players and who am I to go out there and turn pro before my 16th birthday? And that's all good and fine. People want to have their comments and their opinions. Ultimately, you do what you believe in your heart. I think for me, things turned out OK.

I don't think the entertainment business in general will ever just be okay with how people are. I think we're in a business that critiques everything we do, and you kind of just take it with a grain of salt. I look at my grandmother, and I think she's aged beautifully, so I hope that I could be a smidgen of how she's aged. There's nothing you can do. All you can do is take of yourself and do the things that make you feel good and make you healthy and age appropriately, but there's always going to be people out there are going to say something, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I learned very quickly that the NBA is a very rough place, physically and mentally. There's no mercy.

I felt like everyone was shitting on me, like, "She didn't get that deal with Interscope. She got dropped! She won't get another project!" making it so much worse then any of it really was. I felt like they wanted me to fail and I thought, I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm going to get my glory. I'm going to get my shine.

A lot of people believe in reading reviews. If I get too focused on some detail of what they've said about me, I'm going to end up shooting myself in the foot.

When you are free from self-doubt, you fail better. You accept criticism and listen.

Stop bitching and try again.

To all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothing.