Andrea Hirata Quotes

I am a five-foot six-inch, dark, ordinary-looking man. People didn't imagine that I would make it.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I'm the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

I'm learning as I go. I don't know everything. I never had anybody to look at, nobody ever taught me, and where I'm from I didn't have any famous role models.

I know that a lot of people take inspiration from the fact that I was just a common man with no film background who turned into a star.

I try and tell all the kids that I meet that hope to be amazing one day and be a professional athlete or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever they want to be. I tell them they can do all that because Tourette's won't stop them.

I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.

I knew what I was getting into when I chose golf. Hell, I knew I'd never get rich and famous. All the discrimination, the not being able to play where I deserved and wanted to play - in the end, I didn't give a damn. I was made for a tough life because I'm a tough man. And in the end, I won: I got a lot of black people playing golf.

It's a great challenge to come from little New Zealand and beat the odds in Hollywood.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

Coming from a small town it was tough to dream big. When I grew up in a small town in Georgia, my biggest dream was one day to be able to go to Atlanta.

When I started getting so many haters and closed doors, I decided to prove that it could be done. I was a divorced single mother of three at the time and a size 12 - not your typical model artist that labels feel work for the music industry.

A misfit like me getting anywhere in Hollywood as I somehow have, seemed, certainly at the time of 'Spanking The Monkey,' kind of out of reach, or not a very realistic take.

People never expected a boy from a small town to have a life like I did.

I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.

I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened.

I think I knew acting was what I wanted to do. But I was from this small town and there was no place for an adult to recognise it.

A great tennis career is something that a 15-year-old normally doesn't have. I hope my example helps other teens believe they can accomplish things they never thought possible.

I made my living being 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the average model. And that's where I got famous.

I was a freshman and auditioned for the school play. Freshmen usually never got cast. I was the first freshman to be actually given a legitimate part and it was that feeling of 'Wow! I broke the system!'

As a kid, I really wanted to have my own show. But when you grow up in poverty, people tell you nothing is possible. So I kind of gave up on that dream.

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.

I've always been an underdog. I feel like I beat the odds.

I might have been born in a hovel but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars.

There's hardly any precedent for a guy like me to have the career that I've had. Because I grew up the way I grew up, I'm an in-your-face kind of guy. I developed that as a defense mechanism to survive in the streets. I do that in Hollywood in the service of my passion.

To be in a magazine when you're 20 is okay, but when you do it when you're 65, it's much more fun!