Quotes About Ambition

My childhood neighbor played piano, and he told me we'd get all the girls if I learned how to play-and I was probably in eighth grade, going into high school, so I said, 'Sign me up.'

When I went to high school, my whole neighborhood, they followed me. They wanted to see me be successful.

I would tell little Zavion Davenport that it doesn't matter where you're from and how you grew up, the neighborhood you grew up in.

I loved it, but had to forget about acting after elementary school because it was the sort of thing you just didn't do in my rough neighborhood.

I grew up in the neighborhood where 'Rocky' came from.

I knew guys in my neighborhood who should have made it somewhere but got stuck. I wasn't raised like that.

I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.

Growing up in the rural south, my family didn't look like our neighbors, and we didn't have much. There were times that were tough, but we had each other, and we had the opportunity to do anything, to be anything, as long as we were willing to work for it.

Growing up, I was always adamant that I would never do 'Home and Away' or 'Neighbours,' because as an actor you want to set your path as that serious kind of actor.

My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.

I am neither going to Bollywood nor joining politics.

I would gladly have accepted a heaping spoonful of nepotism when I got out of college and was looking for a job.

When I was little, I wanted to be a civil engineer. Not a ballerina, not a doctor, a civil engineer. I was such a nerd.

I would have liked to be a nerd. I didn't even make it to that.

Stay in school and band, kids! It had its nerdy moments, and I always felt like I wanted to do something more with it.

As fun as it is to be the nerdy best friend. I'm capable of more than that, and I feel that I have emotions to share, and there are roles I can add something to. I just hope there are other people who are willing to take that chance on me and let me tell their stories.

I was a nerdy student.

I don't really play off nerves. I just want to win.

I learned that if you want something, you've got to really go for it, try to put the nerves aside.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other thought. This is the way to success.

I get nervous before every shoot. I'm really jealous of the people that can just rest on their laurels and say, 'I'm good; this is it.'

I don't really get nervous about the people I'll audition for, especially if it's people I admire and want to work with: it actually makes me more excited.

When I'm nervous, I know I care about something - you should be nervous about things that you want.

I was nervous from the very beginning, and it got worse as the years went on. I was conscientious and wanted to do more, always, than I was able. I don't think, when I was playing, that I was ever happy - beginning at 4 o'clock any afternoon.