Quotes About Adversity

When I was sixteen years old, I was sentenced to two years in prison; the Swedish government changed it, so I could go to a boarding school as part of a social programme. I was in this boarding school with some of the richest kids in Sweden.

I have both Swedish and Iranian cultures ingrained in me, so that's always there. Plus my love of the U.S. began early on. But growing up in Sweden as one of the few people of color around was not easy by any means.

You can't just sweep me under the rug like I won't come back stronger and better.

You've to celebrate the good days because there are brutal days that make the good ones sweet.

I think if you just hang in there long enough and keep doing what you know is your sweet spot, I think the world eventually catches up to you.

I think that when you're kind of just shoved out there and you have to be tough and you're facing tough people and people are saying bad things about you, that all of a sudden, you have to become a little less sweet.

Everything can't be sweet. Everything can't be peaches and cream.

It was kind of a hard lesson when I figured out that not everybody is going to be kind, be sweet. So I've learned that I am never going to make everybody happy. There's always going to be someone who can't stand the way I write, and I can't take that personally.

Not all roles you do can be chocolate sweet.

I say the sweet science is to understand not only how to fight coming forward, how to be a big puncher, but also understand, if you run into a guy who can take your punch for the first time, how to react.

The ground swell is what's going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are cliches also, of course, and I'm sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.

It's never fun to get swept, but it's going to happen.

Getting swept is hard.

Mortals grow swiftly in misfortune.

I shouldn't have been diagnosed as swiftly as I had been. I shouldn't have recovered as fully as I did. I shouldn't have been able to write a book that did as well as it did, and that book should never have been made into a movie. Yet, here I am.

When you have to cope with a lot of problems, you're either going to sink or you're going to swim.

In this business you either sink or swim or you don't.

You want to be in control of a lot. You grow up. You sink or swim. I suppose I swam.

I think I've gotten to the point in my life where I have to do everything that I'm scared of because you're not going to learn anything if you don't, so you just have to dive in the deep end and see if you can swim.

I've never been in any pain, ever, like that in my whole life. Now it's set me so far back, I just don't' have the lung capacity to swim the way I can.

All the guys at this top level, they're pretty much dangerous all over the place. If you're not good all over the place, you'll be in a little bit of trouble. It's hard to swim at the top end if you're only good at one thing.

A lot of guys that were trailblazers, if we were to go back to the actual time, were just really scared and had no choice, but the water's rushing in, and you either swim or sink.

In this game, you're on your own. You either sink or swim.

I had a lot of ear infections when I was younger, so I didn't learn to swim until I was about 14.