Quotes About Validation

You don't project yourself in the Hall of Fame as a player. It's only during that five-year period where people start asking about it, and it doesn't seem real until it happens.

Go find out if you can make your product. Once you make it, stop projecting what's going to happen and go find out whether your product can sell. Find out whether someone is willing to take hard-earned cash out of their pocket and exchange it for your product.

If a girl comes to me first for a prom or a bar mitzvah and she likes the way she looks and her boyfriend likes the way she looks, she'll come back.

So far I haven't really been prominent enough to get critical attention focused on me. So, of course, I fully expect bad reviews, but I will be wracked with misery as a result.

When you're not the Steph Currys or the Kyrie Irvings of the league, long-term promises are irrelevant.

The problem is, and I'm just as guilty of this, a lot of people see their follower count increase and mistake that for friendships. It's great to have followers, especially if you want to sell albums, promote shows, or promote your friends, but you still need to get outside and talk to other human beings.

I think there's a lack of respect for me out there, from the promoters, boxing people. It's something I've faced ever since I put on gloves. I don't understand it. I know my father doesn't.

We need proof in our society.

People started to ask me, 'Do you really play guitar?' They thought it was a prop. It was just interesting, because of all the imaging stuff.

I was a dancer, and it's not really cool for a boy to dance, so it was inspiring to see a movie like 'Footloose' where a guy is dancing masculine and had a proper reason behind it. It made me feel cool, and when these kids would make fun of me, I'd be like, 'Oh, didn't you see 'Footloose,' man?'

I always felt like the Academy was very late in acknowledging things. I've seen them do it with hip hop when it should have been acknowledged. It was already penetrating mass levels of culture and radio, and yet they wouldn't give it a proper category.

The thing about awards is that a lot of those moments are about the whole world telling you that you deserve it and rah, rah, rah. I'm very appreciative of that, but I love experiencing stuff by myself. Because it feels different. You know the truth, and you can hear what the voice in your head is saying properly.

I cannot lie: as good as it feels to get my deserved props, the best part of reading social media after I meet folks is reading, 'Mike was a nice guy.'

The magic words 'on the Internet,' if inserted into nearly any sentence, seem to protect it from normal critical scrutiny.

My father told me I couldn't possibly be a model because I was too short. He's very protective. I did it partly to prove him wrong.

People try to tell me like that, 'Oh, you shouldn't be proud,' or, 'You're not this,' or, 'You aren't that,' or whatever the hell. I'm just kinda here to say, like, who is anybody else to tell me who I am or what I've gone through or what I haven't gone through?

It always feels good to put something you're proud of out in the world.

No matter how old we are, there is nothing better then getting the approval from our parents and the sense that they are proud of our accomplishments in life.

In America, we see a fan and it is like, 'Oh, we are proud! We have a fan in America!'

I ain't got nothing to prove to nobody.

You're constantly trying to prove yourself, even after you've made it.

Every time I dance, I'm trying to prove myself to myself.

I don't feel as though I have to prove anything to anybody.

I should not have to prove my ethnicity to anyone. I know who I am.