A Quote by Laila Ali

I was never offended that people underestimated me because of my appearance or that they thought I was pretty and discouraged me from fighting because they didn't want me to risk hurting my looks.
Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.
I was approached by Avon which took me by surprise, cause I thought "why me?" I thought it would be Olga, but they wanted me to be the face of their fragrance and since filming Bond I have recorded an ad that looks great and obviously the stills. It's brilliant because I never thought I would get to do anything like that and it is a lovely opportunity.
Everything that scared me is losing people I love, and everyone that I really love, as it relates to females, I've lost. So what it's made me be is the animal that I am because I don't want to sit down and think about the things that are hurting me, but, you know.
I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry. I cried because you wouldn't let me speak. I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine. I shone because I thought you loved me.
My thought process is I have been lied to so much by people who I thought I could trust that it motivates me to want to be as honest as possible, to project that energy, because that is how I want people to treat me.
When I had my sheep, I was happy, and I made those around me happy. People saw me coming and welcomed me, he thought. But now I'm sad and alone. I'm going to become bitter and distrustful of people because one person betrayed me. I'm going to hate those who have found their treasure because I never found mine. And I'm going to hold on to what little I have, because I'm too insignificant to conquer the world.
I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.
People always ask me, Do you ever think you'll wake up one morning and not be funny? That thought would never occur to me--it's an odd thought and not realistic. Because funny and me are not separate. We're one.
In the past, I think I was scared of showing myself. I thought people disliked me because I received so much hate when I was young. But as I grew older, I realized that there were people who disliked me and people who liked me. So I learned that there was no need for me to be so conscious of what others thought about me.
My son is the reason why I write music. He's the reason why everything is different for me. Because when he came into the picture, my priorities changed. I can risk possibly being incarcerated because the only person pays for it is me. I know that if I'm not physically available to take care of him, nobody else will. I want to have the relationship with him that me and my father never had.
I can think of the number of people who were like, 'I will never get a cellphone because I don't want people calling me all the time. And I will never get on Facebook because I don't want to share that stuff with people. And Twitter, that's not for me.' And this is just the natural progression of things.
Advice from my experience, for me, I've never taken no as an answer, I don't believe in that. If I want something, I'm going to get it. When people tell me that I can't do something, it just motivates me more. For me, it makes me smile, because I just want to prove everybody wrong.
I tell people I never got to hear Dylan Thomas read because my husband wouldn't let me, because he thought it would be a sort of bad influence. People say, 'And you didn't go?' They're so surprised because the me they know would have gone. And I say I was very much a 'yes, dear' wife.
I didn't necessarily want to be famous growing up, but I knew I would be a good famous person because I'm not offended if somebody comes up to me and knows things about me and wants to engage me in a conversation.
While I was boxing professionally, I never thought about my looks. The furthest thing from my mind was 'messing up my pretty face' when I was on my way to the ring to meet my opponent. Yet, people I'd meet along the way would always ask me if I was worried about my looks. Then they would go on to say that I was 'too pretty to box.'
Expectations don't scare me because I have worked towards them. I want people to expect better things from me with every film. I never want to be in a position where they don't expect anything from me. I want to be in a position where if they are expecting sun from me, at least I will be able to reach the moon.
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