Colin Powell Quotes

I ended up going to NYU for film school - close to Pennsylvania - but we talked about what if I went to UCLA or USC, and my mom's whole world was caving in.

My mom just wanted me to do anything that was academic, whether it was become a doctor or be a lawyer. Engineering suited her... then I dropped out. It was not what I wanted to do at all; it just felt so unnatural, and I couldn't put my finger on why. I just knew it wasn't for me.

I went to college and did advanced electronical engineering, not really knowing what I wanted to do. It bored me to death, so I dropped out.

Originally, I was set on going to Hawaii Pacific University. We visited the campus in Hawaii. I was gonna be a Rainbow Warrior. I was gonna play softball. I was gonna major in marine biology. Everything was set. Then my dad was like, 'So you're not gonna do music? If you do go to Hawaii, there's no studios there, baby girl.'

I moved from New York to El Paso in 2015, just before my senior year. I was super nervous. My mom, she's in the Army, and she got stationed at Fort Bliss. We packed everything up and drove all the way to El Paso.

It was a very long and hard decision. My dad kept telling me, 'You can always go to college, but you can't always go pro.' That made sense to me.

When I graduated from high school, my mom and dad were saying I needed to go to college, but I said I wanted to pursue my dream of acting. At the end of my high school career, they quit their jobs, and we moved out to California on a leap of faith.

I won't lie, I didn't know there was a concert. I've always known about the Nobel Peace Prize and the different prizes given out for science and this and that, but I didn't know there was a concert the day after. When they said, 'You're going to perform in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize concert,' I was like, 'All right, I'm there.'

Wake Forest came knocking on the door, and I accepted that offer. It changed my life completely.

I have two young sons that are very interested and work in real estate. I made it a policy they need to work five years in progressively responsible jobs outside of the company, preferably in New York, and then get a masters degree, so I am making it hard for them to join.

I was watching TV and saw the 'Emeril' show, and it spoke to me. I went out and started researching the culinary world and chefs that I knew nothing about. Then I moved to New York and went to culinary school, and everything just fit like a glove. It's been on ever since.

Thank God I applied to Howard. It's where I belonged.

I started my career in the U.S. military. Traditionally, in the military... you either start with a technical background or a more leadership-focused one. I took the leadership path.

If I didn't play international cricket, I would have joined the Army.

My mom was a great cook so I always wanted to eat and make stuff. I did cooking in 4-H but it wasn't until I was out of college that I decided I wanted to make this my career.

I grew up going to musicals with my mom here in New York, going to Broadway. I used to be in musicals in high school.

I have 52 first cousins. My mom and dad were the only two to move to North America, so I've got deep family there, but I'm a California kid.

I got into cooking just by watching my mom and my aunts and my great-aunts and actually one of my cousins who has her own catering business in Atlanta, Georgia. So everybody around me really cooked and it was just all these different styles and backgrounds and cuisines of cooking that I found so interesting.

When I was 11, I moved to the United States with my two brothers and my mom. We moved to northern New York, up near the Canadian border, from Argentina, and there was nobody there that spoke Spanish, and because there was no internet at the time, not even cable TV yet, I lost the connection with my childhood friends and the culture I had been brought up with for my first decade completely.

Madonna is my role model shes such a powerful woman. I love Gwenyth Paltrow, shes an actress I aspire to be like. And, of course, my mom. She drove me from New Jersey to New York every day for commercials so I could get where I am today.

We did monologues and scenes, and New York I did a scene from Amadeus and a monologue from Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead by Eric Bogosian, and then in L.A. I switched the scene to This is Our Youth and did the same monologue. I was spiky-haired, super skinny. A lot of people were like, "You should come here and do a sitcom." That was the feedback that I got. Obviously it was quite a different journey than the one I've actually had, but I just listened to people.

Marg Helgenberger and I were waitresses in the same restaurant in Evanston, Illinois. I'm happy to say that that restaurant has since been torn down. [...] We both had an audition for ABC soaps - different soaps, but we auditioned at the same time, and she got the part and went off to New York. Three years later, I went to L.A. So she was kind of an inspiration to me. And it makes sense that we will both be in Wonder Woman together, because we ARE Wonder Women.

Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is here," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!

When I started acting, my mom said, "If you want to go to film school and eventually direct, being on set is probably the best film school in the world." I'm incredibly grateful for the career I've had, but I was an actor to be a part of movies and TV, not the other way around.

I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.