A Quote by Lenny Henry

It was never on the cards for me to go to uni, going to a sink secondary modern in the Midlands. The threat was that if you didn't get your exams, you would end up in a factory. Which I did, but actually that was a great experience, and I would have even got an engineering diploma if I had stuck my three years out.
When I turned 21, I really wanted to go to uni, and then I thought about it and realized all I wanted was the experience. All the stuff you do in uni, I did in London, which is hang out and party with friends - but instead of getting up and going to lessons, I got up and went to work.
I had a dream of music and art and the big city in which I would get lost, where no one would know me and I wouldn't know anyone, where I would work at some ordinary job, and if one day I got up in the morning and decided I wasn't going to go to work anymore, no one would ask questions.
I stopped going to high school when I met Big Pun, which wasn't the smartest thing. So I never got my diploma. When I went to prison, it's mandatory to get your GED if you don't have a high school diploma.
When I finished the juniors I felt, perhaps for about a year and a half, that everything was going to be the same and that I would be able to go out there and win any match. But it wasn't the case. I struggled. It took me time to adjust and to realise it was not going to happen like it did in the juniors. It was three years between the junior ranks and reaching the Australian Open, and even then, having reached the final against Hingis, I wasn't really realising what it would take to go higher.
There are times when I've had ideas walking down the street that I thought were great, and the minute I got onstage, I would think of them and go, 'Wow, that would never work,' even before I did it in front of the audience.
I remember when the results of the All India Engineering exams came out. I ranked 7th. I even got a scholarship. But it was during the sixth semester of my engineering course that I decided to call it quits and pursue acting seriously.
I had all kinds of fantasies, like a lot of girls, but did I actually go through the motions of planning a wedding and buying bridal magazines and imagining things and setting up who would play what role? No. Because as I grew up, I started to believe that I would be one of those gals that never got married.
Unlike some people who have experienced the loss of an animal, I did not believe, even for a moment, that I would never get another. I did know full well that there were just too many animals out there in need of homes for me to take what I have always regarded as the self-indulgent road of saying the heartbreak of the loss of an animal was too much ever to want to go through with it again. To me, such an admission brought up the far more powerful admission that all the wonderful times you had with your animal were not worth the unhappiness at the end.
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and I honestly started performing for my family when I was around three. I would jump up on the coffee table and I would get in the closet and ask that they introduce me to come out, and from that point on, my mother stuck me in dance class and children's theater.
I'm a natural born show off. I love performing, and at school we had a really good music scene and an even better drama scene. When I got to university, I played in bands and did sketch stuff and it was always about coming up with material, which is why I never really practised and have no chops!! When I left uni, I carried on playing and trying out at stand-up.
We had to go to bed by 8 P.M. My siblings and I would often play cards under the bed-sheets. But we would get caught and then were made to practise harder. My father would say, 'You need to work even more if you aren't tired enough to go to sleep.'
I remember what it felt like when I was young, and I looked up to someone, and they would pay me just an ounce of attention. And some of the bands I listened to when I was young probably never even sold any albums, but it didn't matter to me. If I'd go up and say, 'Great show,' it would be amazing that they even would acknowledge me.
I always hated those fantasy books where, at the end, all the kids had to go home. At the end of a Narnia book, you always got shown the door. Same with The Wizard Of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth. You get kicked out of your magic land. It's like, "By the way, here's your next surprise: You get to go home!" And the kids are all like, "Yay, we get to go home!" I never bought that. Did anybody buy that?
I would go back in time and do differently it is that. I would go back and ask, 'Why?' But I never did. I got up, he got up, we went on about our day. We never discussed the situation [with Dre]. Just, never.
Someone stole my wallet last week. The guy called me up and he was mad at me. He was like 'you gotta get your finances together. You got no cash, your credit cards are maxed out. You don't even have minutes on your calling card. I had to use my card to call you.'
Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses, and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us that three was one ... and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies.
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