Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I grew up in what my mom will always dispute as 'the hood.' She just doesn't like the name. But it had its similarities to any neighborhood like that. The all-black neighbors and the all-black problems and the all-black happiness. And I really loved it.
Back when I was growing up, gangs wasn't heavy. We was solo thugging. When we got money on our own, the hood got money. It wasn't about colors or a certain name when I was growing up. We wasn't doing no gangs. But as the generations change, things change.
Everyone looks at our films and thinks that we are somehow able to make movie after movie that does well and is entertaining, but there's an enormous amount of work that goes on under the hood and an enormous number of mistakes that are made along the way.
When I was still at Interscope, I told them about Rae Sremmurd and we were talking about signing them. I was like, 'This is the hood Backstreet Boys, the black *NSYNC. This is the most ratchet pop is gonna get and this is the most pop hip-hop is gonna get.'
In P7, I played Robin in a musical version of 'Robin Hood' and afterwards DO McLean was standing with mum and dad and he told them that I should go into drama. It is still extraordinary to me that a man in that period would think that that was an option for me.
Every day I'd come home after school, pop the hood of my mom's car, put alligator clips on the battery, and wire into the house and go play on my computer. If I used it for too long, I'd wear down the car battery, and my mom would be all mad at me the next day.
I do miss the Avalanche. That's the my favorite car of all time, but that Dodge Ram Rebel has overtaken the Avalanche; I just love that truck. It's got good vents in the hood; there's no running boards underneath, so I can go Baja-ing if I want to, off-roading.
I tell people all the time like, man, when you a kid, you don't know you're in the hood, or you don't know you poor. You just accepting your environment when you a child, and that's when your friends are really your friends, wholeheartedly and nothing malicious.
The idea of a financial transaction tax on Wall Street trades is gaining momentum. I have a bill called - nicknamed the Robin Hood tax also. It's a bill that taxes stock trades, derivatives and bonds, and would generate in the neighborhood of $300 billion a year.
I'm always polite in auditions, but I wasn't like, 'Oh, please give me the job,' for 'Robin Hood' because I didn't think I'd get it. I got told about the audition just a few days before I went to India to film something else. I must have been a bit cocky with it.
Your man Daddy Yankee, some black and white people who know what's going on in the 'hood and the clubs are supporting him and loving him. But he's speaking Spanish, and he's speaking directly to the Latino people, and the people who know the language really dig it.
The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn't do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood.
People want to call me racist for doing the Bon Qui Qui character, and I'm like, 'Look, Bon Qui Qui is a representation of a hood chick. That's it.' There are lots of hood chicks out there: some are black, some are Mexican, some are Salvadorian, and some are white.
Matangi's mantra is aim, which is MIA backwards. She fights for freedom of speech and stands for truth, and lives in the ghetto because her dad was the first person in Hindu mythology who came from the 'hood, but had gained enlightenment through not being a Brahmin.
I grew up on the west side of Detroit - 6 mile and Wyoming - so I was really in the 'hood. And I would go to school at Detroit Waldorf, and that was not the 'hood. Growing up in Detroit was good. I had a good perspective, a well-rounded one, and not being one-sided.
Real shapes and real patterns are things you would observe in nature, like the marks on the back of a cobra's hood or the markings on a fish or a lizard. Imaginary shapes are just that, symbols that come to a person in dreams or reveries and are charged with meaning.
Visibility has an effect on those who are privileged; it brings more privilege, and on those who are marginalized, it brings more marginalization, because it also brings a spotlight onto them where they're at, in the hood or in certain places that are less tolerable.
Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write, 'I remember, I remember the house where I was born.' I don't even know what mine looked like!
It really upsets me that the media insists on turning 'Do the Right Thing' or 'Boyz N the Hood' into 'black films.' They are American films. They may open the window on the black experience, but they had things to say to everybody. That's why they were so successful.
The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.
A leader is the one who can outline the broad vision and the direction, and say here's where we are going to go, here's why we need to go there, and here's how we are going to get there. A manager is the one who actually gets up under the hood and tunes the carburetor.
My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.
She's like a Barbie, then she wants to be a superhero, or coming out of a spaceship and everything's pink. She makes a certain move that's ghetto hood mixed with a little robot so its like I'm evolving Nicki Minaj and developing her style. She's fearless, and I love her.
Sometimes it's not always about what you can see or hear but what's under the hood of a game that's most impressive. Between those thousands and thousands of lines of code, magic happens. Sometimes the most amazing feats of gaming wizardry happen without you even noticing.
If I grew up in 'da hood,' it would make my story so much more interesting - if I had something to escape from. I had a pretty good life. My parents weren't rich; they weren't poor. I wasn't trying to escape from anything. It was always just the pursuit of something cooler.
If anybody ever needs to find me, I'm in the Glendale Whole Foods. I think it's the greatest Whole Foods on the planet. There are a bunch around the country, but this one seems like it has everything. Plus, everyone is super cool, the flow is fantastic, and it's in my hood.
I was proud of 'Robin Hood,' even though critics wrote negative things. But I had to laugh when this big, shaven-headed Hungarian stunt guy first saw me. He said, 'You Jonas? You playing Robin Hood? You need to go to the gym today.' So I thought, 'I'm going to show people.'
I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight 'method' actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape - it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because 'Robin Hood' was one of my favourite films.
I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.
When Nicki was putting out mixtapes, she was the only female rapper that had any kind of buzz. And not to mention that she was on the track with the guys, you know? So you had the girls playing it, and you had the hood guys playing it, too, so you couldn't run away from Nicki.
I grew up with 2 older brothers, the oldest of which was big into film. Hanging around him got me seeing so much good stuff at an early age. Maybe a 10-year-old should not be watching 'Boyz N the Hood' like 10 times in a row? I don't know. But it probably shaped me in some way.
It's the African-American experience. You've got to wear different masks. When you're in the hood, if you stand out, you get picked on for being weak. Sometimes you have to hide your intelligence. In front of your boys, you might put on a bit of bravado, be a little bit tougher.
Plain white T-shirts do it for me every time. You can spend anything from £3 to £50 on a T-shirt, but I've bought some great ones from H&M, as well as shelling out on Duffer Of St George and a Polish label I discovered while filming 'Robin Hood' in Hungary called Scotch And Soda.
I feel like part of my journey as a filmmaker is to tell different stories, whether they are just a black perspective on things that aren't necessarily hood movies, or Tyler Perry movies or Ava DuVernay movies. Love all those people, but that whole thing has been sowed up already.
I think the Internet is right on time. I think it's very important. It's reaching out to millions of people. Even the most slimiest and grimiest hood cats out got iPhones and Smartphones so they're able to view everything on the Internet, so they're well in tuned to what's going on.
What people don't understand is joining a gang ain't bad, it's cool, it's fine. When you in the hood, joining a gang it's cool because all your friends are in the gang, all your family's in the gang. We're not just killing people every night, we're just hanging out, having a good time.
I once did a film in which I was being chased by wolves. I had a scene where the Alpha of the pack leapt on the hood of my car and stared me down through the windshield. I will never forget staring into those eyes; this wasn't a dog - not even a tough, bad-ass dog - no, this was a wolf.
After high school, I worked as a messenger boy at a local bank. I was miserable. I felt like Robin Hood chained in the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon. As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract and had to count on my fingers.
I am always going to be in the hood in my heart, but what I did was added on the masters of arts, fine arts and the doctorate... if you want me to pull that out, I can get very distinguished... but I'm not going there... I don't have to put on airs; the knowledge comes out - just listen.
There was a week where I was depressed with the rain, and people were telling me to get a light box. But I live on the 14th floor of an apartment complex, and I see the Broadway Bridge and Mount Hood, and it keeps me such company. And like true Oregonians, I don't carry an umbrella anymore.
The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry - knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission.
The narrative oftentimes is that everything that comes out of the hood is 'real,' and so I thought, 'I'll base it on the absurd, the not real. I'll twist the idea of real on its head and see if I can get away with it. I'll make paintings that come not from a place but through an abstract gaze.'
Being South Asian in the U.K. is like being Latino in the U.S., I would guess. It's a bit more hood. You see things; things happen. I was bouncing between worlds. You're acting from a very early age, when you have to code-switch like that. I'm a hybrid, a mongrel. I think many people live that life.
'All Def' is unlike any other comedy show or set because 'All Def' goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a 'stoop appeal.' A stoop appeal is important for us because it's where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.
When I became 'The American Dream,' they needed a hero down here. I had no money - I couldn't buy a car without being tied under - but I had to have a Cadillac with blue stars on the hood no matter what it cost because just driving in it will set how they look at me and perceive this guy; they'll know.
Before playing football, I didn't fit in anywhere. My parents didn't have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I'd come back to my hood and read.
'Copper' is my first period piece. It's funny because I've been doing a lot of episodes of 'Elementary' with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu; they keep bringing me back on the show, and so I go from being an outstanding black doctor to being a kind of hood, ex-car thief who went through rehab in 'Elementary.'
I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation.
In true-life dramas, you have to do so much research. It's a big responsibility to make sure things are as correct as possible. In 'Robin Hood', you have more artistic license - it's all action, adventure and reaction. This gives everyone a chance to make their characters their own and to make them believable.
Woody Allen stayed so good because he never left New York. Howard Stern stayed so good because he never left New York - Mel Brooks when he just got out of New York was doing 'Blazing Saddles;' when he left New York he started doing stuff like 'Robin Hood Men In Tights' - he was in L.A. too long. He lost the edge.