Quotes About Adversity

I was living in my van, playing on the street for almost two years.

I watched a lot of Jean-Claude Van Damme films and loved his film 'Bloodsport.'

I used to drive myself about in an old Austin van... and then have to sleep in the back because I couldn't afford a hotel.

If it came to a World Championship final playing Michael van Gerwen in a last-leg decider and people were booing, that would hurt.

Vanguard never would have happened if I hadn't been fired as CEO of Wellington Management Company, the firm that did the investing for the Wellington fund and eight sister funds.

Most actors don't grow up with sweet, vanilla parents.

Life is all about how things rough up against you and how you see them and the vantage point you have from them.

Sometimes you have a bad day, and you're like, 'I'm over this, and I just want to play tennis,' or do another sport that doesn't require any other variables, but then you have a good day, and it's like, it's amazing, and the success makes up for it.

The sea always offers up incredible stories of survivors' fortitude. Myths of a lot of countries have variations on that.

People end up on the street for many different reasons - leaving care or hospital, problems with debt, unemployment, mental health, family breakup - and so the help they need is varied, too.

My objective was to have as varied a selection of roles as possible. It probably did hurt my career.

I had always thought of myself as fairly tough and fairly strong and fairly able to cope with anything. And then I had a series of personal losses. My mother died. A relationship that I was in came to end, and a variety of other things went awry.

Having had so many human rats in my life, I don't think I'm scared of the animal variety.

I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

At various points, I've had a massive chip on me shoulder. I had fights about me accent with loads of those fellers you get from third-class public schools. They used to think I was speaking German.

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

I really like being thrown into the works. Many actors, I have found, have this as a common trait. We had to, as children, adapt to various situations with either a military family or things like that.

I have, on the other hand, felt ill will from various people in the industry and the press.

People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages.

I've fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

At various stages in my life, I could have stopped, or took the long rest. For some reason, my heart told me otherwise. I just kept going. Half of the time, I wasn't sure where I was heading. The other half, I was probably taking the wrong turns. No matter.

Every acting gig isn't the same, every writing job isn't the same, every live performance isn't the same - the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.

The one thing I have discovered is that we all have challenges; the challenges vary, but our response to the challenges makes us people we are.

It goes without saying that no one at United ever expected any help. We understood that decisions can go against you. We believed we were the better team, and therefore, if the referee got his decisions right, then we would win the vast majority of our games.