Quotes About Adversity

I'm a very positive thinker, and I think that is what helps me the most in difficult moments.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I'm a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.

I really believe I'm no different from anyone else. I just had a few challenges I had to learn from at a very early age.

With standup, I was thrown into the deep end at a very early age, without being able to swim. Acting was the same.

I learned resiliency at a very early age.

I decided a very long time ago that I would refuse to be defined by trauma and would only be defined by success, when and where it comes.

Three days doesn't sound like a very long time, and under normal, everyday circumstances, it's not - but under POW camp conditions, it doesn't take long to wear down a man's sanity.

I worked for a smoothie company, and that was rough. I also sold women's shoes for a very long time. That was super rough.

I realized a very long time ago, that I was never going to be the guy who, 'Oh, you look so big, let's push him in the main event and see,' or, 'Oh, this guy's got the best physique ever, let's put him in the main event and see.' It was always going to be the hard way.

There have been some bad times, some very low points in my life. Doing 'Celebrity Big Brother' was certainly one of them. When I came out my phone didn't ring for a very long time.

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal.

I came along the decade after the generation where a lot of heels were still getting stabbed, so I was always looking for it. I had a bullet-proof vest in a couple places.

There is no bullet-proof vest in my size.

I wanted to write 'In Harm's Way' from the young men's point of view of being in a raft, or hanging in a life vest with just their nose poking above the water.

When you love somebody, and they go through a real adversity, you don't back away from that relationship. You don't say, 'When you're better, call me.' The opposite happens. Your bond strengthens, and you become even more vested.

Madison Square Garden, November 1984. I don't recall taking too much fear into the ring. I knew I could fight. But I got a big shock. They put me in with this rough, tough veteran called Lionel Byarm. He tested me to the limit. But I fought my heart out and, in the end, I prevailed. The story of my life, in my very first fight.

Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless.

I think the one thing I have learned the most from all the veteran guys is kinda like not to dwell on a loss or a bad day.

I was on veteran teams in Charlotte where we won 17 or 18 games. There were times that we lost by 20 for two or three straight games, then came in and watched film, learned from our mistakes. We learned about things like making the extra pass.

Losing is hard on all of us regardless of rookie or veteran.

You play well, you feel comfortable, then you lose via a deflection or an individual mistake and you feel robbed.

I'm always curious to see how a fighter responds after suffering a first loss. I'm especially curious when that first loss is via knockout.

You can crash on one set of rocks or the other set of rocks, and they crashed on the other set of rocks, which was probably being too little to be commercially viable.