A Quote by Alek Wek

I had jobs from the age of 14, when I arrived in London as a refugee. Aged 17, I'd get up at 4 A.M. to work as a cleaner before school. It wasn't pleasant.

Alek Wek

Quote Topics

Age Aged Arrived Before Cleaner Get Get Up Had Jobs London Pleasant Refugee School Up Work

Quote Author

Alek Wek
British - Designer
Born: April 16, 1977

Domestic violence does not only happen to adults. Forty percent of girls age 14 to 17 report knowing someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend, and approximately one in five female high school students reports being physically and sexually abused by a dating partner.

Dianne Feinstein

I was 17 when it was being filmed and so I was at an age where you are learning a lot about yourself. I came out of school to film it, and I hadn't been having a good time in school before that. I get quite shy around big groups of people. If I meet people, especially my peers and people my own age, I always struggle because I've always worked with adults and they have a tendency to molly coddle you a bit when you're the youngest on-set.

Yasmin Paige

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.

Wladimir Klitschko

I lived in South Africa until I was 11 when we first immigrated. My mom had sent me back there when I was 14 for summer vacation. I wasn't doing very well in school, my grades were slipping. I called my mom one day and told her that I wasn't coming back. I ended up staying there until I was 17 before coming back to North America.

Kandyse McClure

I arrived in London and I was terrified. I never wanted to be a celebrity - one minute I was in school and the next I was in London talking to people at a record company. If anything, I didn't feel in any way worthy.

Amy Macdonald

For Leicestershire, through the age groups, I didn't bowl at all. My height was below average for my age up until 17 when I had a big growth spurt. My bowling kicked on from there because I could get bounce from a fuller length and shape the ball away.

Stuart Broad

That's why I kept going with my school - I wasn't talented. That's what's the difficulty - you want to define key talents when they are 12, 13 or 14? When I was that age I was nowhere near. People had given up on me.

Per Mertesacker

My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.

Sarah Gavron

I became alcoholic at around age of 13 or 14. I was full-blown. Every day we would hide the alcohol, stealing from stores or stealing it from our parents and hiding out in dirt fields and drinking it before school and after school.

Reginald Arvizu

If you have a passion and love for something, it's hard to give it up. I had jobs where the people were helpful and let me go to auditions, and I'd make up the hours another day. I was lucky in that respect: I could afford to get to London.

Vicky McClure

When I was 14, I used to have a calendar on my wall, crossing the days off until I was 15, because the school leaving age was 15. Then three months before I turned 15 they changed the leaving age to 16.

Mark E. Smith

When I was 14 I used to have a calendar on my wall, crossing the days off until I was 15, because the school leaving age was 15. Then three months before I turned 15 they changed the leaving age to 16.

Mark E. Smith

I had to take a risk in quitting two jobs I was working at the same time while playing semi-pro up at Doncaster. I had to stop those two jobs and move down to London, away from my family, when the opportunity with Chelsea came my way.

Millie Bright

I think the Control has really opened up the music to a whole new audience. I've met kids recently, kids of people I know who are 14 and 17 who love Joy Division and have been a fan before the movie, which is really weird. How does that happen? I have no idea. But, the music that's out there today is heavily influenced by these bands from the 70s and 80s like Joy Division. I want them to take away a little bit of what Ian Curtis was and, at such a young age, he had so much going on.

Orian Williams

My grandfather Urey was my hero. He worked three jobs. He had a dry cleaner's factory job in the day and a dry cleaner's factory job at night and when that was done with that, he mopped floors in a restaurant.