A Quote by Nick Hornby

Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.
I did, one time, over the past couple years look into maybe doing a little something in a Royal Rumble, just kind of as that, so that could be my last chapter, so the last time you see me is, y'know, this little thing, and it didn't work out.
Learning that aesthetic as a kid - seeing those photos - made me think that that's what photos are supposed to look like. I never understood snapshots. I was looking at them like, "This is horrible; that's not what a picture is supposed to look like." I was taught by these photos. So when I picked up the camera, though I had never done it before, I kind of already knew what I was doing.
God has always been in my life and his little voice in me that lets me know when I'm falling a little too far left or right, up or down you know. I know because there is a little voice that starts saying, 'damn it, what are you doing? You need to slow down with that' or I might not be a good person to hang around you know... So God will do this to me in some sort of way. Or something bad will happen to me.
I went to so many record labels - name any one - and they all turned me down. For some reason I just got the thumbs down for years and years. It sounds like I'm making that up, but it's true. I'm too serious about music and my creations to take just any kind of deal. There were a couple of companies that wanted to put me with a producer, and I said, "Well, I just produced my last album," and I wasn't about to go backwards.
I don't think most people know how to meditate - they fall asleep and they call it meditation. I prefer a kind of sweet, deep, rich prayer in which a person goes in and says, Take me down deep into the reason you gave me life. Take me down deep. It silences the chaos in me. Take me away from my sense. I need to go away now, because I'm in chaos - take me down deep. Hover over me, because I need grace. I say that a lot, many times a day. So that's my practice.
A career is measured over the course of the years, not moments. Over good decisions, over successes, not moments, failures, missteps, or bad comments. I learned that I needed to take a step back and look at my career not in that one moment that made me feel really bad, but what I had done not even in the past one or two years or last one or two hires, but that that career is built over many, many, many, many successive quarters and years and good decisions - never, ever made in that one moment where you felt really bad.
I was a lonely, frightened little fat kid who felt there was something deeply wrong with me because I didn't feel like I was the gender I'd been assigned. I felt there was something wrong with me, something sick and twisted inside me, something very very bad about me. And everything I read backed that up.
I blew through all my money and made some very bad decisions. I had this scam artist scam me real bad and was embezzled over $175,000.
For me [being a kid actor], it's a bit like when you see your mom's friends, and they're like, "I remember when you were this big. You'll always be that cute little kid to me." It's like that times a thousand. Well, times a couple thousand.
A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me.
There's a lot of trainers in my career, between Terry Taylor and Arn Anderson, who've always told me to keep my damn feet on the ring mat, and there's just that little kid in me - I may be 45, but there's that little kid in me that, if I get a chance to do some flying, I'm gonna do it.
It's been stress and drama for a long time now, man. So much has happened. I got shot five times by some dudes who were trying to rub me out. But God is great. He let me come back. But, when I look at the last few years, it's not like everybody just did me wrong. I made some mistakes. But I'm ready to move on.
If I was having a bad day, or if something was really getting me down -- boy troubles, whatever -- I wanted to go out and get a new piercing. It was definitely a release for me. Something that made me feel a little more strong or empowered. Because it was something that had to do with me and no one else.
My wife has now made a point of, after losses, to bring our son into the bed when he wakes up in the morning. So when I'm waking up and I'm still obsessing over whatever happened the night before, I see this little guy right in front of me smiling and wanting to connect with me. It's totally changed how I compartmentalize.
My first couple of years in the league left me very unstable. I had some times where I played well, and I had some times were I really did not get the opportunity. After Rick Pitino gave up on me my first year, people were like, 'He can't play.' So I had to get over that hump.
If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.
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