A Quote by Derrick Lewis

I just really want to put the past behind me, because it makes me angry thinking about it. But it's also the reason I've made it this far in my career. It's like, built up in me. It's what I think about when I fight. My childhood.
[I]t just makes me tired even thinking about it. It reminds me of that feeling I had before I left. Like my lungs were made of lead. Like I can't even think about starting to care about anything. Like I either wish that they were all dead, or I was, because I can't stand the pull of all that history between us. That's before I even pick up the phone. I'm so tired I never want to wake up again. But I've figured out now that it was never them that made me feel that way. It was just me, all along.
Body-shaming is something I feel really strongly about. I think about my niece, I think about my friends who have daughters being on the Internet and reading these things, and it just makes me furious. It makes me so angry.
Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there's always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?
I just want one fight. Because, like, for me, it's not about the status, not about the glory. It's not about the money. Like, I just want to throw my hands and see what I'm made of. And I think that wrestlers and fighters have that same fighting spirit.
I was heading in a self destructive direction. My priority wasn't together, wasn't in order. So me getting locked up was actually a blessing for me. It helped for me to see the light. Once you get the rug snatched from under you - I had my career and family snatched from me, and I was forced to just sit there in that box for three years and think about what I did and how selfish I was, it made me really see things with new eyes, like, hold up, why was I doing that? What the hell was I thinking about? I gotta change. Something's got to give. I can't ever come back in this place again.
I think after 'The Day The Earth Stood Still,' I really stopped thinking strategically about my career. I just did. At that point, it became crystal clear to me that you can strategise your career all you want, but it's so difficult to get a movie made, and creativity shouldn't be subjected to that kind of strategic thinking.
The monster behind the wall stirred. I'd come to think of it as a monster, but it was just me. Or the darker part of me, at least. You probably think it would be creepy to have a real monster hiding inside of you, but trust me - it's far, far worse when the monster is really just your own mind. Calling it a monster seemed to distance it a little, which made me feel better about it. Not much better, but I take what I can get.
It's about feeling alive in the moment because your adrenaline is going, your thinking about that present moment, you're not somewhere else, you're not thinking about what's going to happen 10 minutes from now, and that's the reason why I love fighting, it's when I'm in there. I feel free, I feel like there's no other place I want t be. I can't even think of anything beyond that second. That's why I'm drawn to the fight, because I love the presence of it, where it brings me mentally, it's the purest thing for me.
At the point when I lost my father, it really made me want to be like a father and be like my father. It was a real turning point for me because it helped me mature - it made me think about being responsible because I wasn't the only one I had to think about.
It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.
In polite society, there is such a thing as sensitivity to some issues, as time has gone on. There was a time when we weren't politically correct, at all, and we all wince at moments when we look to the past and see that. I don't really know what the answer is, as far as that is concerned. However, me, as an artist, I don't really think about it, at all. It actually is not my job to think about that, especially in terms of me, as a writer, but also as a filmmaker. I'm not worried about the filmmaking part because, if I'm writing it, that's what I'm going to do.
I don't want to get so lost in thinking about me and talking about me all the time in interviews. It's so nice to unwind and just look at other things and get out of yourself. It's hard to detach myself from myself without neglecting myself. You know what I mean? I don't want to get in to the habit of thinking about my career because when it comes down to it, it's not really that important. I could die tomorrow and the world would go on.
I feel less and less like that every year, and I guess maybe even more so with every new record that I put out. I just think, as the years go by, it's harder and harder to really find a reason to be annoyed that you made something that people want to continuously talk about. Certainly there are contexts in which the record can be discussed which will get me on the defensive and make me want to put some kind of calibration or some kind of context on what the record means in relation to my career as a whole.
I had to make a decision about whether it would impact how I felt about trusting people, and I decided I wasn't going top allow it to impact my outlook on trust, because I believe trust is a choice. And I've always given people the benefit of the doubt until they prove me otherwise. So, it just made me stronger in my conviction about that, but it also taught me never to put anything past anyone.
Jail just made me wiser. It made me smarter. It made me wake up to a lot of stuff. And also it made me a better businessman. I had to learn the music business. It just made me a better person as far as the way I live.
I want to fight the guys that are ranked above me, even though I don't care about rankings because they're just opinions anyway. Even if a guy is below me and wants to fight, I'll take the fight if it makes sense.
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