Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes

Now some folks say that we should be glad for what we have. Tell me, would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?

Growing up, the last thing I ever thought I'd do is be an entertainer.

After I graduated, I tried Broadway, which was difficult for me. It was tough to get a part on Broadway, so I just started talking to audiences at different social gatherings, and little by little I became Don Rickles - whatever that is.

'Ugly Betty' has been four years of my life, important adolescent years. I think that all I've really known was getting pampered and interviewed and getting my picture taken.

Rejection is a big part of show business. It can be tough on anyone who doesn't have fairly good self-esteem. Especially kids, as they try to discover who they are.

I came to Vegas because I wanted to, not because I thought it could help my career. I didn't even know they had comedy clubs here.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

You know what? I did a lot of things that were deliberate, and they all backfired. I was trying desperately to become Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler, and it did not work for me. I took a lot of leaps that I shouldn't have, traditionally speaking. I paid the price for that. I was not as hire-able for a while. But then I just gave all that up.

The book is called 'Thanks for Nothing' and it's really the story of how I got into comedy and traces back every strand in my life that is relevant to that story. It's kind of an autobiography but isn't, as it stops about 25 years ago. It goes right up to the first time I do stand up.

It wasn't until I could get out of Stanford that I could sit down and think about my life, to do the things that most kids do, which is to ask who am I, what do I want to be when I grow up. I never got to do Dan Pintauro.

Each of us has our own crazy on the show. The show's called 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,' but we're going to explore the craziness of everyone on the show... That's one of the attributes of the show I love so much.

I've gone through several cycles. When I was little, I was the cute kid with missing teeth and funny one-liners. Then I moved on to be the young guy who wanted to be a grownup.

It's kind of like OK, I want to be a singer. And I felt if I would have stayed with the 'Osbournes' and done the whole Osbourne thing... I would have been typecasted right away before I had a chance to experience other things.

Before stand-up, I'm not sure I even had a point of view.

Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.

One thing I can say is that as I've gotten older, I've gotten younger. I've grown up but I've kind of immatured (but matured!) but I've allowed myself to be a kid. When I was a kid, I was so much of a professional and carried myself that way. It was crazy.

While so many white Americans are unaware of conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside. The television sets bombard them day by day with the opulence of the larger society.

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing they have to be the thing they have been made. Children go crazy. Really, even children go crazy, believing the shape of the life they must live is as small and mean and broken as they are told.

I was literally fabricated over in France and born about six months after the boat landed at Ellis Island. This was the heart of the Depression. For the first 12 years of my life we lived in a terrible ghetto on the East River.

A lot of women want to be married and have kids one day, but before we get there, it's so important to establish who you are, find yourself, and live in that for a minute before you become somebody's wife and mother.

I'm so many people. They shock me sometimes. I wish I was just me! I used to think I was going crazy, until I discovered that some people I admired were like that to.

With acting, I started as a kid and it was my safe space and the place where I felt the most free to be all of myself. What gets explored in our show is where that instinct starts and where it meets with career, and how that can change your path a bit.

I do agree to a certain extent that it is unfortunate that I have to be a little more aware of being a kid and growing up and figuring out who I am, but at the same time, it's part of what I love.

If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.

I'm also starting to wonder something else. If maybe the point of this crazy quest I'm on wasn't to help me find Willem. Maybe it was to help me find someone else entirely.