A Quote by Don Rickles

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.
I was so angry at God for taking my father from me that I marched up to my mother before the funeral and told her I was going to quit nursing school. I just wanted to stop living.
A long list. From getting cut from the high school basketball team, to getting fired from jobs, getting credit cards rejected and cut up. Rejection has only been a distraction, not a roadblock. “Every no gets me closer to a yes,” was the saying I used to use.
I ended up dropping out of high school at 16 and getting kicked out of my home. My parents told me, sadly, that because I was so disruptive to the rest of the household, that I could no longer live under their roof.
I'm not saying to the kids yo drop out of school, education is the most important thing first and foremost. You know, my circumstances were a little different. I needed to work to help out so I couldn't be in school. Not only that, it was getting into trouble and all that s**t. I was getting into trouble more in school than I was out of school, so I had to just go ahead and make that adjustment, so I mean realistically I always tell everybody, in my case I don't got a high school diploma, but I have two Grammys so it kinda worked out best for me.
When I got fired from coaching, I started coaching high school because my son played. I realized real quick that high school football is in trouble. There's no budget. A lot of kids have got to pay to play, and every year, coaches are getting out of the profession. Kids aren't playing like they used to. It bothers me.
I had a really hot girlfriend in high school and I'd get into fights over that. And by the time I got into high school, I was moved around into a lot of schools, so I was getting into fights in high school.
I had a mother that told me what to do all my life, and I traded that in for a wife. We got married two years out of high school which is not what you tell your kids to do, right?
For me, it was always that one extra job that you do to survive in the industry. I also realised that I was not well-sculpted as an actor because I was getting a lot of rejections. I stopped acting and focused on casting.
Getting to play the part of Selena was life-changing for me, i got to immerse myself in her life, got to know her family, her home, her culture ... every part of her story. It was a special time in my life both professionally and personally. Playing her not only opened doors for me in the film world, but it inspired me to start my own music career. In a lot of ways, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't had that experience.
My mother - neither one of my parents went to college. My mother, after her four children had grown up, went back and got her high school equivalency degree at night, at Central High School in Providence, became a teacher's aide.
When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out, and she would take me with her. I'd go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.
I don't see [ Trainspotting ] as an albatross, I see it more as a calling card. It's got me out to Hollywood, I've got a good agent, I've got a good manager, I'm getting a lot of work out there and doing a lot of stuff - getting a lot of film projects on the go.
When I was in school, I really thought about soul a lot. I was listening a lot to Bjork and to the Commodores. I really wanted to know how they felt. And especially with Bjork, the music there told me wow, that's really her soul there.
I got out of Las Vegas after high school. I knew that if I stayed there, I wouldn't have been able to pursue my dreams as an actor or dancer. My family always told me to dream big, so I made sure that I got out of there and explored new places, because the world is huge. And I'm still learning new things every day in this business and in my life.
I was a lot smaller in high school, and guys were a lot bigger and faster than me. I stole some bases in high school, but it wasn't until my senior year that I started getting faster.
My mother told me on several different occasions that she was livin' her dream vicariously through me. She once said that I was getting to do all the things that she would have wanted to have done.
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