A Quote by Mahershala Ali

There was things just like not being able to date or - I'm talking like 15, 16 - like just certain things that my friends started to do. Like, they started to get phone calls from girls or like, you know, go and hang out 10, 11 at night, kind of going to the movies. There were just certain things that - it's not that I couldn't do all of those things. It's just that every choice was really deliberate and conscious and thought out and sort of balanced against the religion in a way where I felt - I wasn't necessarily trying to convert at 12 like [my mother] was.
Things like rhyming - it just wasn't falling out of my head that way. So I started to get quite freaked out that I just couldn't write anymore. And then I just kind of went with it, and thought that, "This is the way that my brain's working," in a more direct way, then I should just try it like that for this album. And follow it. Just went with the writer's block, almost - it's a strange thing.
When I first started going out to lesbian clubs, I felt a very binary recreation of hetero culture. There are butches and femmes, and I felt like I was neither of those things. I'm in a turtleneck and jeans and just learning to be comfortable in that space. I realized I don't have to be a certain way.
When I started coming on the scene, just really new into NXT, and people started seeing me, I got a lot of positive feedback from my friends, my friends back home. They were like, 'Oh, you are doing such great things for young girls,' and then it clicked in my head, like, 'Wow! I didn't know that was something I could do here.'
When you're in a room with a guy who has a vision like that, it's just one of those things where you close your eyes and just see that vision - then you just go with it. The guys that I write with are so incredible, just like my producer Trent Willmon, those guys know how to bring things out of me - especially things that I maybe didn't even know that I had.
My life is so random. Certain things I can't even explain. There's a thing about being lucky and... I feel like certain things are just, like, in your cards. I'm just walking the path that's already set.
People just like the thrill of anything. Dangerous things and dark things are exciting. Like as a kid, I knew I wasn't going to get killed if I went into the Haunted House but you kind of feel like you are. And when it comes out the track the other side, it's like, "we're still alive"! And I find it really funny when adults get really scared because I've not been really scared since I saw Jaws when I was a little kid. I just think people like the thrill of it, they like to feel like they accomplished something, that they survived the movie.
I like to just hang out. My friends dont like to do that, but I do. Because, a lot of times Im busy, and I just kind of like to get a chance to just hang out.
When I started that's how I wrote because I didn't know any better. I was just like "I want to make music." Then there were all these things that I learned to get myself over certain humps, but I think it just comes down to: do I have something to say or not? If I'm feeling something I should try to get that out, and maybe it's not words, but trying to turn it into something.
When I first started working on movies as a production assistant, we were shooting 65, 75, 85 days. I mean, granted some of those things were "Godzilla," "Deep Impact," and those kinds of things, but these days it's like 30-35 days or 40-45 days and you just feel like you're humping trying to get everything done. It's like "Move on, move on, move on!" That's not the way to get the best performances or the most interesting shots. You have to constantly balance schedule and quality of work. For me, that's the biggest thing.
I was really unfit last year, so I worked out for a long time, then spent time by myself in Oregon. For about two months the only person I saw was my trainer. Every day I did a lot of running and I just didn’t want to talk to anyone for two months. So when I started talking again, it was like you would communicate wrongly, like you wouldn’t really remember how to speak. That was one of the key things as well as just reading the book, reading the script a million times, just figuring things out.
I always say I never felt 'latched' to a gender. I just kind of always felt like myself, and I never felt like I had to do certain things or be a certain way to fit into a certain mold.
You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn't work out like that.
I can be a little bit outrageous. I can be a lot of things. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so I love to go out there and do kind of crazy stuff which is slightly outrageous, like bungee jumping, skydiving, surfing and that sort of stuff. But I also like to just chill with my friends and go and see movies and do normal things.
One of the things I want ... all the kids here to remember, is that these [Major League Soccer] stars were not born superstar athletes ... Many of them started out just like many of you-playing on a team at school, or just kicking a ball around on the playground with their friends. But they stuck with it. And I tell this to my girls all the time. I mean, you get to the point when ... things you enjoy ... start getting hard-that's when you know you're getting good, and you have to stick through it.
It seemed like there was no control over it. I think certain things just popped. God was blessing us in telling us that certain things were going the way they were supposed to go.
I just felt like, you know, I read a lot of scripts out in L.A., out here in the industry and I just felt like this film was just being genuine. I just felt like it had really great characters. And all the three different characters have completely different stories and they're all kind of intertwined together thematically. So I just thought it had great characters, great themes
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