Quotes About Determination

If your No. 1 priority isn't winning, and people can tell? That's the battle. Now there's a problem between people, because that guy's No. 1 priority is winning, and that guy's isn't.

I'm sure I was insensitive. I'm probably still a jerk at times. But my priority as a freshman was to be good in basketball and play a lot. Not to be the nicest person in the world. I was one-track-minded. I still am.

Acting is and will always be my priority.

Maybe I won't stay out of prison. Who knows?

In 'The Next Three Days,' even though it was a prison breakout movie, I was asking myself, 'What would I do? How far would I go for the woman I loved? How far would I go, and what would I do when the person then told me that they were guilty? Could I still believe in them?' So it was very personal.

No one wants to be sent to prison, including me.

I could have ended up in a gang or in prison because Harlesden is real rough and I was always a naughty boy. That's how I got into boxing.

I thought, 'This is not going to drag me down, this is going to make me a better man.' So I came out of prison a man with a plan, determined to set up a business importing Italian ingredients.

In my mind, there was never a thought that I wasn't going to find a way to get myself out of prison.

Once I understood what was going to happen - that I was going to prison for life - my end goal was making sure they wouldn't be able to keep me there.

I knew early on that I was going to prison for the rest of my life and that there was nothing that no one was going to be able to do to help me.

For me, it was the Army or prison. I wanted to make something of myself. The Army gave me that determination, the will to win.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

When it comes to the cause of justice, I take no prisoners and I don't believe in compromise.

People at school knew I sang and that this was what I was gonna do, but I was pretty private and low-key.

My father died when I was young, and my mother, Ruth, went to work in an office selling theater and movie parties. She put me through private school, Horace Mann, in Riverdale. She sent me to camp so that I would learn to compete. She was a lioness, and I was her cub.

I never wrote. I also never really thought about being an actor. But when it was time to go to high school, we couldn't afford private school, so I tried out for all the special schools in New York.

I don't really care anymore: I'm fiercely proud of the fact I've been able to make a career despite the fact I wasn't born into privately educated schools.

I'm not exceptional. I didn't grow up with privilege.

Prove to them people that you should have gotten picked earlier, and then you make your money. The privilege is just getting drafted, and once you get picked, prove to them that you were supposed to be drafted.

Well, I come from a poor family. My father is a farmer. When I started playing, I wasn't privileged enough to afford hockey pads and a kit, that was out of my reach.

I consider myself a prize fighter going into a very, very tough ring called daytime TV, and I take it very seriously.

In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.

I've never wanted just part of the package, part of the prize. I want it all!