A Quote by Zhang Ziyi

I wanted to escape so badly. But of course I knew I couldn't just give up and leave school. It was only when I heard my mom's voice that I came out of my hiding place. — © Zhang Ziyi
I wanted to escape so badly. But of course I knew I couldn't just give up and leave school. It was only when I heard my mom's voice that I came out of my hiding place.
I wanted to travel and I was fascinated with stand-up and I just knew nothing was ever going to stop me from doing it. My mom tried to, she'd say 'You need to go to school and have a back up.' Nah, mom, this is it.
Growing up on a farm, I saw that if I didn't go to the military or go to school, and I knew my mom and my family wasn't going to be able to send me to school out of their pocket, so it basically came down to athletics. I knew I didn't want to work on a farm. I knew I didn't want to do manual labor the rest of my life.
Both Mom and Dad were blackout, killer drinkers. Dad came to school football games drunk. I'd find Mom passed out in the bushes, scared and hiding.
When I was growing up my mom was home. She wanted to go to work, but she waited. She was educated as a teacher. The minute my youngest sister went to school full-time, from first grade, mom went back to work. But she balanced her life. She chose teaching, which enabled her to leave at the same time we left, and come home pretty much the same time we came home. She knew how to balance.
I wanted to be a teacher because that is all I knew. It was a great course on primary school education, in which I could specialise in music, but I ended up dropping out after I was honest with myself about what I really wanted to do with my life.
I came back and decided that I wanted to go to college for acting and got my family on board. My mom, who was a single mom, was a little reticent, but I think after that summer [in the Governor's School], she saw a shift in me and realized that it was something I wanted more than just a hobby.
I just, I was in such denial within myself for the longest time, just because of the place I grew up in. Like, it wasn't common. I didn't know anybody that was gay. I think I had one gay friend in high school and she never even, like, came out. It was just, like, we all just knew.
My parents only played Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye. That's when New Kids came out, and we wanted to jam that. My mom was like, "Put that thing off and put my damn record on". So from old school to '90s to recent, it's just always been there.
I set out and I said I wanted to just release music, and I don't care how many people heard it at first. And I just wanted to put records out. I knew that.
I just wanted to sing, to get my voice heard. I knew I had to do everything possible to stay in the industry.
Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.
I grew up in the theater with my mom and that's how I knew I wanted to be an actor in the first place.
I didn't want to leave school early, honestly. I had just established relationships with my teammates and I knew people there and I didn't want to give that up and start something new.
I moved to Des Moines when I was 15. I asked my mother to give up costody and sign parental rights over to my grandmother, who I lived with while I went to school. I was clean and finally starting to figure myself out. I can only say that now without laughing. I was still very out of my own place, and I didn't even know what that place was. All I knew was that I could write music, that I had no idea what that could mean and that I was still surrounded by people I couldn't relate to. I hadn't found my tribe yet.
[I was] particularly eager to give voice to the women of my mother's place and generation, who grew up in turn-of-the-century, privileged New England households, who really never had a chance to flower and assess themselves and find out who they were. More than anything, I wanted to give voice to the sort of anger that women of that generation could never express for themselves.
Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, "I won't be a mom anymore." It gutted me pretty badly.
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