Gina Rodriguez Quotes

My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

When you grow up in a place like where we were, no matter how talented you are, if you don't even know that other things exist, there's no way for you to ever feel empowered because you're like, I'm confined to this small world.

The mantra I grew up with was that no matter where you came from, hard work and education could set you free.

I just really felt I had to help the community I came from. I know how hard it is to make it out of here.

It doesn't matter where you're from. You can be from the hood or the suburbs. You can be poor with no education or a college graduate. No matter your background, you can win.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

I think my thing is I grew up in the ghetto, and I was able to get a second chance. That's what I'm trying to tell kids.

I was always a closet lover of acting. My mom was very practical. She never, ever restricted our dreams, always told us we could do or be anything. Then I said, 'Maybe I want to be an actor'. And she said, 'Maybe not that'.

Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys. But I've been able to do different things.

I'm living proof that you can make it out of the ghetto.

Growing up with three older brothers and being the youngest and the only girl, my mom always made me tough. She's taught me over the years how to be a strong, independent woman, how to carry yourself in a positive way and anything that my brothers can do, I can do.

That's great because I know as a teenager, I didn't relate to a TV series where all people do is cheerlead and drink sodas on the weekend. So I think it'll be great if it can be seen by a few people at least.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

When I walk into a room that is all white and all male, I'm sitting on the outside of that club. That's sometimes an intimidating experience. But I think that everywhere that I've gotten is because I've worked hard. I have the experience, I have the credentials - I continue not to take any of that for granted.

The 'boy next door' parts I get offered, I don't find interesting.

I didn't want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I've tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.

I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.

I had to fight my whole life to break out of my circumstances. That's just part of my makeup.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

Before 'Lucky Louie,' nobody would ever cast me to play a mom or a wife; nobody ever saw me in that role, which is weird, since that's who I really am.

I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in front of me. My working poor parents told me that I could do better.

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare.

I am not a product of privilege, I am a product of opportunity

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto - I tell people you don't have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

Both my parents are first-generation success stories.