A Quote by Wilmer Valderrama

I can honestly say from my experience, my family and I had to start from scratch. We left Venezuela back in 1998 and sold the few things we had to come to America in search of the American dream. We went through really tough times. There were moments where we were wondering are we going to make it.
When I was leaving Yemen to come to America, things were tough. My dad had just been laid off, and it was a challenge. When I lived in Yemen, I thought America was a perfect place. Everything was bigger and better. I dreamed big. The American dream, you know? You have to work hard for your dream to come true.
At the beginning of my career, I can honestly say there were a few things I was doing wrong, and I was wondering why I was going a little bit off track.
A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.
We've always done things the way we wanted to. It's true that our experience affects some of our decision making, but that's a part of growing up and evolving as a band and as people. The first five or six years were really rough. We had no money. We were lost and crazy and made mistakes, but we learned a lot and suffered through tough times, and I think what we did reflected where we were and who we are.
Actually, when I fought in PRIDE, we had the best fighters in the world. Back then, the UFC had a very serious and big crisis; they were going through some tough times trying to get top fighters. All the best fighters were in PRIDE.
When you left this one theater in Norfolk, the actors had to walk through the lobby to get out to the street. People would see you and say nice things, tell you that you were good. So, pretty soon I'm pretending to forget things backstage, going through the lobby a couple of times.
Growing up in the rural south, my family didn't look like our neighbors, and we didn't have much. There were times that were tough, but we had each other, and we had the opportunity to do anything, to be anything, as long as we were willing to work for it.
The last 15 years we had one of the biggest economic booms. But I think a few bubbles have burst in a few countries. So we are all going through the same things. But let's say Ireland, in the '70s and the '80s was tough, but if you grow up with a tough background it makes you strong.
Honestly, in the beginning, it was really tough. Coming from Cincinnati, Ohio, I was just a girl who had a dream, which was to go to Los Angeles, have a career and to be able to support my family. To have a dream like that and, you know, you're not ready.
I had one of those light bulb 'a ha' moments while screening 'Good Will Hunting' in Camp David in 1998 - Madeleine Albright and the Clintons were there, and I just became really inspired by all of these amazing people. I left the screening asking myself what I could do.
In September, I left the show. We were going through discussions and negotiations, and I had been on the show for about 11 years, and there were some things that I was asking for that I didn't feel were the moon or the stars.
I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
I had three sessions of chemotherapy so it was really tough, it was hard to go through it. But while I was going through my treatment, I was always motivated that I was going to come back and play for India. I think that's what kept me going and got me through.
The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.
Looking back, I remember my family laughing a lot. We were never the kind of people that dwelled on hard times. My family laughs when things are tough. Growing up like that, I got used to making jokes about things that were difficult. So when I started doing stand-up, that's what I went towards.
I left my frogs, which I had grown, with my supervisor, who had moved to Geneva, and he and a technician grew them up. So by 1962, they were adults, and one could publish a paper to say that these animals, derived from nuclear transfer, really were absolutely normal. So it took a little time to get through.
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