Damian Woetzel Quotes

After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.

My childhood definitely revolved around my relationship with my brother. I wanted to be different. I wanted to find my way of being as intriguing and interesting as he was.

The reality of growing up is we changed schools so many times, my brother was my best friend. We have a five-year age gap, and my brother inspired me. He started boxing, and I just want to show that I could do things better than him.

I'm very happy for the Contreras family. They're out. Now they've got a chance to experience life the way I did as a kid. You know, his kids are going to have a real chance in life now, and the same way that I had it.

At the age of 25, I gave up my study of Japanese language and culture at university in Brisbane and moved to the town of Alice Springs.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

I grew up with a younger brother, so I can get pretty rowdy.

It seemed like I woke up one morning and had an epiphany. I thought, 'I cannot do this. I do not want to get married. And I'm not going to law school - it just doesn't excite me. I'm not wasting anybody's money. I'm going to move to New York.'

When you grow up with siblings, you can be like, 'Isn't this weird? Isn't this funny? Do we agree on this, or do we disagree?' You have some point of reference, some touchstone. When you grow up an only child, everything is internalized.

When I came to BYU, I had no idea what I wanted to study. It really was a decision based on football. I wanted to come here and play football. The decision has turned out to be so much more than football.

I certainly enjoyed having my sister, because when she came I felt a certain responsibility to help her fit in, and help her learn English. I wanted her to play with all my toys. I was actually, I think, really scary to her, because I had so much energy.

I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.

My advice to young people everywhere: Choose schools that encourage self-discovery early on. Don't be afraid to buck convention. And when someone asks you what you want to do with the rest of your life, take the time to really think about it.

I feel like I had as normal a childhood as anyone, but it had a certain focus. Maybe other kids focused on sports.

My life was filled with family in South Sudan. I am the seventh of nine children, and we grew up in what would be considered a middle-class family. We did not have a lot, but we did have more than a lot of other people.

While I loved my family, I would always have this association with my father. I would always be coming up against that conservatism. It was just liberating to be in London.

I've actually never played with any of my brothers before. They've always been too old for me.

In my formative years, when I was a little kid, I'd get out of elementary school, and because my mother worked as a nurse, I'd have to find a way to get a ride to the high school and watch my dad's team practice.

Travel means growth. You have to see something new. You have to grow. You can't grow in the same place. Travel takes the edge off and you are thrust into a new environment where you are forced to survive and to learn the language.

We're all trying to figure out what's next, what's best for our families, what's best for ourselves, and there's a certain sort of comfort in knowing that you're not in it by yourself.

I got to do school properly and all the stuff that you should do when you're young and teenage: first friends, first girlfriends. It wasn't like I needed to be doing acting.

There wasn't a favorite team or player in the Betts household. I played baseball, day in, day out, and learned the game my own way alongside my parents - Willie and Diana.

I had to do a lot of studying 'cause I had to learn new languages all the time. So it was a little bit painful watching other kids play outside, and I'm stuck at home learning something.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

Because education is such a broad area, I chose to focus on language learning.