I was skating with friends in my neighborhood, and then eventually I was invited to go to the skate park with one of them. When I saw people flying all around - literally flying in and out of bowls - that is when I knew I wanted to do it. I wanted to figure out how I could get there and how I could fly.
Tom Brady is Tom Brady. He was a sixth-round draft pick. A lot of people passed up on him. He's a Super Bowl Champion, Super Bowl MVP. He's been in a bunch of Super Bowls, and he could care less about all of that. He just cares about winning the next game.
Archaeologists have been digging up thousands of graves of people called Scythians by the Greeks. They turn out to be people whose women fought, hunted, rode horses, used bows and arrows, just like the men.
These people were well dressed in skins, had some guns, but armed generally with bows and arrows and such other instruments of war as are common among the Indians of the Missouri.
I just felt like I was making people angry because I wouldn't wear the frilly bows.
I've been saying for a couple of years now that people need to let God out of the Sunday morning box, that He doesn't want to just be with you for an hour or two on Sunday morning and then put back in His box to sit there until you have an emergency, but He wants to invade your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.
People say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's financing, but maybe you should use this actor. And there are the threats, at the end - if you don't do it this way, you'll lose your box office; if you don't do it that way, you'll never get financed again... 35, 40 years of this, you get beat up.
Art is something that grows and breathes and lives, and it shouldn't be predicated on the success of box office - but it is. But within that, you have to give people a chance to find their voice, to play, to continue to create.
Are people like Tom Cruise in touch with their public? I doubt it. Footballers are more like the rock stars of yester-year: they are box office.
People had boxed me in as a 'pretty girl with followers that's rapping,' but I think my project and the work speaks for itself.
The industry is starting to be more open to what we do. I just don't want us to be boxed in whatever people assume Christian rap should be. We're dudes who love hip hop, and we love Jesus, and that's going to be apparent in our music.
I truly think a long career is to keep the audience guessing and not being able to be boxed, and for me, I'm not hell-bent on playing the lead in things as long its an interesting character with phenomenally talented people, and it's a script that I feel is genuinely innovative, creative, and potentially interesting for an audience.
I've boxed many people in their own backyard plenty of times - in China, I boxed a Chinese girl in the final of the world championships, and I've boxed Russians before in their home nation as well.
People say that I'm a boxer. I actually started with kick boxing, and then I moved onto boxing, and then I moved onto grappling.
I think that every boxer should understand he's on the pedestal for a short span. It's best that you use boxing and don't let boxing use you. Use boxing to sell, because people are selling you through your boxing career, so you have to learn to sell yourself, and you'll never starve.
All of a sudden, one day, you're this boxer that everybody like, or you're this guy that people pass on the highway and wave at. The next day, you're this guy that everybody want to touch - be in touch with you. Then you think that this is the answer to all things.
People like to see me fight. A name can only take you so far. There are only a few fighters out of the thousands of boxers out there that have name recognition. I'm definitely not upset by that.
We spend a lot of time on Skype and other video interviews, and it's funny how many people will prepare for a Skype interview by wearing a formal suit jacket with pajama pants on the bottom. Then suddenly, someone is at the door, and you have to get up, and you realize you're wearing reindeer boxers. Just put pants on.
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.