John Singleton Quotes

Growing up in the streets of Bed-Stuy, it was hard, yo.

I grew up in Compton: 116th and Wilmington.

I grew up in South Central Los Angeles in the '80s, back when it just wasn't a cool scene. But my mother had the foresight to look for a number of projects that would keep us away from the streets.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know?

Living in the projects helped me with this role.

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.

I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.

I grew up in the inner city. It wasn't a joke.

Well, I grew up in a tough neighborhood.

You know the things I went through as a youngster, coming into the business, all the good, the bad and the ugly that came. I'd had a rough life. I grew up single parent. My mom, she was like a father to me.

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.

I didn't have to leave my neighborhood to be surrounded by the things that 'Super Fly' is about. It was easier than most scripts because it was about an environment that I knew.

Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

I'm going to make my own 'Trapped In The Closet' one day, about a black kid growing up in the hood.

I'm from the hood. You put me in a rough neighborhood and believe me, I'm OK.

When people hear my music, they ain't really hearing about no shiny stuff, the glamorous life. They're going to hear that gritty, slum.

The streets would have chewed me up and spit me out and I knew that, but I found my own ways and different knacks for getting in trouble and being reckless with my life. And I've overcome a lot of personal demons and to be alive is really my greatest achievement.

There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles -famine, disease and such-like -and some folks are born with money, some with none. In the end it is up to the man what he becomes, and none of those other things matters. It is character that counts.

There are people that don't need to run towards adversity. They grew up in circumstances where it's forced upon them. Other people lead, pushier lives. So there are all kinds of forms of adversity in the world.

Homeless people's dogs are more knowledgeable than dogs in Beverly Hills. Why? Because they explore, they move forward, they go through the ups and downs in life. A dog in a wealthy environment, there is no downs except what he lives.

I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.

What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.

When you think life is tough, it can get a lot tougher.

There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.

I think sometimes in life the biggest challenges end up being the best things that happen in your life.