A Quote by Sherman Hemsley

I was in a play in elementary school and had to jump up and run away. I was nervous and tripped and fell down and everyone laughed. Their laughter made me relax, so I pretended it was part of the show.
We did a play of 'Frog and Toad' at my elementary school. And I'm not sure if this is part of the book or it was something that we made up on our own, but I auditioned to play the black hole, which somehow makes sense to me.
Something happened when I was in elementary school. A Disney artist named Bruce McIntyre retired, and he had done drawings for 'Pinocchio' and 'Snow White' that was just classic stuff. He moved to the town I grew up in, Carlsbad, and he became a part-time art teacher at our elementary school.
The entire elementary school in Rotan, Texas, presented a theatrical production of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' And the part of Sneezy fell to me.
I was fired from my first job in New York. I was just out of school, doing the Welsh play, 'The Corn Is Green,' at Equity Library Theater. I was studying with Uta Hagen, and I was really working well, but they got nervous. They wanted results right away. We had a run-through, and I wasn't there yet, so they fired me.
I was always an exhibitionist. I liked it when everyone laughed. But I didn't do plays in high school. I was too nervous.
I auditioned for Robert Redford once and I was so starstruck I couldn't even speak. I had a mic wire at a screen test clipped to me and then I got kind of nervous and I paced in a circle and then took a step and tripped and fell on my face. You just have to forgive yourself and keep going on.
I wish airplanes were more like elementary school with someone up front telling everyone to sit down and shut up.
I had the opportunity to play every day in the minors, and everybody knew me in the minors. In the big leagues, it was a little different. It was up and down and up and down, and I didn't get a chance to show people that I can play every day and I can be a superstar. Now, I can show everybody what they are getting from me.
I had been doing all my school plays, elementary school, middle school, and high school, and then summer. I'd wanted to act for a long time, and I thought I was going to go to college and do theater, go that route. But 'Superbad' kind of fell on my lap. I was very, very lucky for that.
I just love comedy, and I honestly believe that laughter transcends everything. If everyone laughed together, laughed more, it would unite the world in peace.
At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn't allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn't do anything with my classmates.
One of the high points in my career came from a time I had with Tim Conway on a film when I had him fall down with laughter. I had this scene with him where I was this mechanic down fixing his car. I can't remember what my line was as written, but they were okay with me doing a made-up line. So Tim asks me what's wrong with his car, and I look up and say, "Well, looks like you got a squirrel caught up in there."
IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We'd been school friends. We'd picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn.
If I hadn't been told I was garbage, I wouldn't have learned how to show people I'm talented. And if everyone had always laughed at my jokes, I wouldn't have figured out how to be so funny. If they hadn't told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn't tried to break me down, I wouldn't know that I'm unbreakable.
Like so many other kids with special needs, I have been bullied. Kids in elementary school made me eat sand, and those same boys would walk behind me, teasing me. Finally I had enough, and I told them to grow up.
Everyone liked me when I went up on the stage at a talent search in elementary school, and that's when I decided to become a music artist.
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