A Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

I went to school four years later than most people because I was a teen father, hustled on the streets, worked, lived on welfare and the like, and didn't get to college until almost 21. That's when I officially got licensed and ordained, right after that.
When I got out of college I worked for DC comics. I worked on staff there and I also freelanced for them for about a decade. I spent two years on staff as an editor right out of college. I'm from Los Angeles and I came back here after a couple of years in New York, to go to Graduate School at USC. I wasn't thinking specifically about animation although while I'd worked at DC.
I didn't get to college until my 20s, because I was a young father on welfare and had to take all kind of jobs to support my young son. There's what frames my view on the topics I discuss on my shows, and the average person relates to that. No matter how many degrees I have now, I lived that life, and that comes through to the people watching.
My grandmother wanted my father to be a teacher because she was a teacher. He didn't go down that road until much later in life; he just kind of retired after almost 20 years as being a visiting lecturer at Stanford, where he got his graduate degree.
I met Peter Sellers when I was 21 and we got married ten days later. He was not right mentally, but I hung in there for four years before I left.
I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he's innocent.
When I used to live in Chicago - went to school there for four years and lived there for two years after - the whole time, I worked at this restaurant called DMK, and people would come in, and I would wait on their tables, and they would say, 'Oh my gosh, man. You look like the dude from 'Parks and Rec.' You look like Jean-Ralphio.'
I was born in St. Louis; I lived there for three weeks and then my father graduated from St. Louis University, so we all got in the car and split. I don't really remember much. I grew up in Connecticut most of my life and then four years in Germany. My father worked for a helicopter company, so we went over there.
I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment.
I didn't become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God's spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose - His purpose.
I had a tremendous upbringing and foundation but as others like me have experienced, when you go to college, mom and dad are no longer there to help guide. There were some moments in college that really cemented my own convictions and beliefs. It was a real period of growth and maturity in my sanctifying process. I got married in college. That was a tremendous blessing. Four years later, we started having children and that gives you a deeper understanding of the Father's love.
I did some acting in high school and then a little more in college, and it just was the thing that I felt that I wanted to do more than anything else. And then I was fortunate enough to audition for and get into Yale Drama School right after college, and I spent three years there.
I came to the Steelers after four years of high school and four years of college, and now I look on my stay here as 13 years of postgraduate work; I think I'm ready for the world.
I come from making money in the streets. The streets all I know. All my family is still in the streets. So, it's going to be hard to pull me right back into that. When I ain't doing no shows four days out of the week, I may be in my hood or at my grandma's house in the hood. But yes, I got a kid. I got to get more serious about the music so he don't get dragged into that life.
When I was three years old, I went to an orphanage, but because of the beatings, I ran away when I was five and lived alone by selling gum on the streets. For ten years, I lived like a fly. I was eventually able to graduate elementary and middle school through qualification examinations and the first thing that I ever liked was music.
We left Egypt when I was seven, and we didn't return until I was 21. My teen years were divided between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. Up until we left the U.K., it was like your regular teenage years. The one thing I remember is that I couldn't date. That was one thing my parents made very clear.
My paternal grandfather worked in the mill all his life. My father worked in the mill almost his whole life. I worked in the mill while I was going to college in the summers. And then, for one stretch, I quit school and worked one year.
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