Childhood Struggles Quotes

I'm Egyptian, and my parents stupidly decided to move us down to South Carolina when I was five, which was pretty brutal.

I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.

As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy - they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.

I always identified with Frankenstein because as a kid, I never got the girl.

I know what not being able to read can do to a child's confidence.

Growing up, I would have to watch the other children and learn from my mistakes. I would have to push myself to overcome the things most people don't have to think about. Brushing my teeth was very difficult because of the noise of the brush.

I was a different kind of player as a kid and didn't do too much shouting and screaming. If things didn't go my way, I tended to get a bit overwhelmed. All I wanted to do was cry on my mom's shoulder. I didn't know how to handle defeat in front of a crowd, and I didn't want to be the loser.

I had a bad background just growing up as a child.

When I was a kid, dealing with trying to discover myself, I didn't have anybody to talk to. I didn't have any Internet and didn't have any friends. You felt very alone and very frightened.

I had a difficult childhood. I had lots of anxiety and questions. I found the world scary and intimidating.

I was terrible at sport at school. I was fat, which made things slightly tougher, but it also meant that people were encouraging to the point of patronising.

I grew up in a small town in a low-income family and was the only black kid in my elementary school. I felt like an outsider, and since I didn't know of LGBT people - much less LGBT black women - living happy, healthy, and successful lives, I didn't believe I could ever marry or have a child.

When I was 13 I asked my mother if it was possible for this to end - I'd had enough of it. And that was right about the time that we got a call for 'The Exorcist' interview.

I was a diligent little boy at my primary school and then I went to public school and became mediocre at most things and pretty rubbish at others. I had a really tough time. I didn't enjoy it at all. But it made me the man I am today.

I remember when I was growing up, I always wore glasses and so if I was on-stage or just being able to move around playing sports, I was never really able to because I had glasses holding me back. Wearing contacts has just been very helpful.

I was always small and thin. I wasn't the kid who got invited to parties.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

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

As a child I was sometimes so hungry that I used to dream that one day I'd get locked in a grocery store.

I was kind of a misfit, actually. When you're young, you want to be like everybody else, and I was like nobody else. I couldn't sit still. I was impulsive. I still am. What is now called a 'talent' did not serve me well as a child. I didn't have friends. I was really an outcast.

During my childhood my family risked a lot financially. They put every single penny they could into my racing and also their free time was completely compromised.

I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

I was mortified by my parents - what they did, who they were, everything. I hated who I was. I hated everything, and I would live in a fantasy world and try to be different. But that's not a lot different, I think, than a lot of kids.

We were not rich by any means. My dad was a plasterer and worked long hours - I hardly ever saw him when I was growing up. He had always gone to work before I woke up, and usually, I would be in bed before he came home.