A Quote by Don Alias

Mom did not want me to have anything to do with playing music. Being from a middle-class Black family in that particular era, everybody wanted you to have a profession -- a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. So she sent me to school to study medicine.
My mom has never cared if I did sports or not. Obviously, she's proud of me, and she loves the fact that I'm an Olympian and she's got these trinkets to hang around with the medals and whatnot. But if I wanted to do whatever, if I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, she was going to support me regardless.
My mom wanted me to study medicine. But it was not easy to become a doctor in those days, and I became an actress. So, if I hadn't taken up acting, I would have tried to become a doctor as my mom wished for it.
My mom wanted me to be like... a doctor, a lawyer. I was with it, being like a lawyer or something, because you make hella money and I wasn't tryna be broke.
My mom just wanted me to do anything that was academic, whether it was become a doctor or be a lawyer. Engineering suited her... then I dropped out. It was not what I wanted to do at all; it just felt so unnatural, and I couldn't put my finger on why. I just knew it wasn't for me.
Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they're very different approaches.
Everybody literally thinks I've had plastic surgery. My mom's family call her, and they're like, 'Did Hailey do her lips? Did she do her nose?' Do people want me to go to a doctor and have them examine my face so they can tell people I haven't? My face has just matured. I grew into my looks.
I was not from a middle-class family at all. I did not have middle-class possessions and what have you. But I had middle-class parents who gave me what was needed to survive in society.
My mom often tells me to get married, but she gets it now that I don't want to. Like any other mom, she is worried, but she also understands the demands of my profession. I am blessed to have a family like this.
If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music.
My family belonged to a very particular formation - middle-class and coloured, not black. That meant it had a closer connection to the plantocracy than many other people did. So I didn't feel like an ordinary black Jamaican boy.
I decided that I wanted to be an artist in middle school, and although my mom wasn't fully on board with me becoming a trainee, she really supported me throughout the years and is very proud of me now.
I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.
We were a single-parent household for a while. It was just my mom, me, and my brother. We were on welfare for about a year and a half. But I remember my mom never complained, and we never wanted for anything. She always made ends meet and she's been the rock for the family. She instilled in me work ethic and toughness.
My mom was always keen I stayed in school and got good grades, and she was always keen for me to do medicine. I used to go to drama classes when I was younger, and she would always take me. But when I got to an age when I decided it was what I wanted to do, when she accepted it, she had actually been the most supportive person ever.
I came back and decided that I wanted to go to college for acting and got my family on board. My mom, who was a single mom, was a little reticent, but I think after that summer [in the Governor's School], she saw a shift in me and realized that it was something I wanted more than just a hobby.
When I was in school, you could pick any instrument you want, and they'd teach you how to play it. That changed my life. I loved playing music in school, and it sent me on my path as a musician.
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