A Quote by Paige VanZant

When I started training to fight, it was more out of boredom than anything. I was looking for more things to do. I started with boxing, and my coaches told me I had a lot of potential and that I should consider making it a career. I was like, 'Whatever.' I was just 15 at the time, and I never imagined something like that.
I just feel like I have when I started making a lot of money, I started spreading it out to people. Mickelson, the whole deal, the over-tip: if I see a guy that looks like he needs a hand out or something, I'll pull something out and give him something.
I had to start boxing because I missed working on something and learning and I guess there's a little more aggression in boxing. I couldn't really get that side of me out, but I used to be able to by hitting a volleyball. That's why I started boxing.
I guess, and it may be a flaw, that I think about rhythm more [than anything else]. I'm always wanting to find something unusual. I've started to try and write more traditionally, but for whatever reason, I tend toward trying to find something that sounds more like a pattern to me.
I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.
I never want to feel complacent, and I had started to, a little bit. I had started to feel like "I have this thing I can do, it's worked a few times," but not only does that get boring, but you feel stagnant and unproductive. So I was feeling a lack of creativity and motivation, so I started making a more conscious choice to grow personally. It wasn't even an image-conscious thing, like, "I don't want people to think this way about me." It was really just a way to keep myself energized and feel excited about this thing I love doing. Like I went to couples therapy or something.
I won my very first fight by knockout in the first round. The trainer at the time was in love with me and he said I could make a career out of boxing. So I started boxing for the barrios or neighborhood championship.
There was things just like not being able to date or - I'm talking like 15, 16 - like just certain things that my friends started to do. Like, they started to get phone calls from girls or like, you know, go and hang out 10, 11 at night, kind of going to the movies. There were just certain things that - it's not that I couldn't do all of those things. It's just that every choice was really deliberate and conscious and thought out and sort of balanced against the religion in a way where I felt - I wasn't necessarily trying to convert at 12 like [my mother] was.
When I was 12 there was a big shift in mindset and I realised that if I want to get something out of it then I need to work hard and focus all my energy just for this sport and that's when I started training and taking things more seriously. I became a lot more self-critical and analysed the driving more and more, and that was when I was 12.
When I first started out on the soap, I was more theatrical, like a stage actor, a little bigger than life. As I did more and more Love Of Life, I became more natural. I learned the value of underplaying. It was a great training ground for me. There was a big difference in my style of acting from where I started with that show and where I ended, and where I ended was a good jumping-off point for doing nighttime television and movies.
For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic.
I started making music... I guess I was 12, and I started playing 'Guitar Hero.' And you know, it got to a point where on expert, you can only exceed to a certain point. And so, you know, I was like, 'Let's play real guitar. Let's not waste more time.' So, I got my mom, I told her to buy me a guitar for Christmas, and I started making music then.
I started making skits, and I started, like, getting more followers, and, like, my friends told their friends, like, 'Oh, she actually be funny.'
I had a gold medal in olympics at 12. At 14 or 15 I had my career set before me. Because I started so early, I had this daily training. It developed a focus. It became so natural that it was like a native language for me to play chess. That's why I didn't feel pressure.
It came like a natural thing for me, and I liked it. That's how my amateur career started. But again, no interest in a future in boxing. I just thought it was like a little pastime, something to do.
I've never been someone who's very prone to boredom. I don't know, boredom seems like something you should grow out of at about 15 or 16. There's so much that needs to be done.
Had more confidence than I probably should have in high school. But I do remember feeling like I wish I could physically mature a little faster, fill out. In college it started to happen a little bit more, and my confidence started to grow - then I got out to L.A., and that got squashed immediately.
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