Tony Finau Quotes

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?

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

I grew up in the Bronx. The Bronx teaches you to survive. It's like, 'Bring it on!'

I think basketball harnessed and built my toughness and competitiveness. I grew up in a tough neighborhood, and you were either going to cry and moan about it or get tough.

When we were walking through the narrow alleys [of the Mathare Valley slums], it was literally impossible not to step in the raw sewage and the garbage alongside the little homes. But at the same time it was also impossible not to see the human vitality, the aspiration and the ambition of the people who live there.

I never thought I was going to leave the trap. I even told my mother, 'I'm gonna be the trap God.'

Normally street children are shown in terms of the tragedy of their lives - which is true - but there's also another dimension: their wisdom, dignity and enormous capacity for survival.

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly.

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

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.

When I was a kid, I had to fight for everything.

I grew up in a slum neighborhood - rows of tenements, with stoops, and kids all over the street. It was a real neighborhood - we played kick-the-can and ring-a-levio.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, 'I'm an orphan again today, isn't this terrible? Poor me.'

I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx.

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.

Sammy Sosa grew up without a father in the back of a converted public hospital in San Pedro de Macoris, a dusty seaside town in the Dominican Republic. His father, Juan Montero, died when Sosa was 5.

I don't want to be the underdog. I don't want to be the poor guy, getting kicked around.

What I find curious is that I ever became a writer at all. I grew up in the South Bronx, the land of poverty and petty hoodlums.

We may be poor but we have our dignity.

They had been brought up in the School of Hard Knocks.

My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.

For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity - the way they dealt with adversity and poverty - and their good humor.

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

My look and my character come from my experiences as a child. I wasn't allowed to have girl toys, and I grew up poor. I also had a rough relationship with my stepdad.