A Quote by Mike Piazza
Nobody wanted me. Scouts told me to go to school, to forget baseball. Coaches said, 'You're never going to make it.' I appreciated their honesty, because I think when someone tells you something you may not like, you have to use that as fuel for motivation.
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I was a last round draft pick. Nobody wanted me. I could count the amount of scouts that told me to go to school, to forget baseball.
I could have gone to a bigger school. I use it as motivation going to a school that loved me. I wanted to put them on the map and show everyone that you don't need to go to a top school to make it in the NBA.
Everybody told us we would never make it. Even friends would say to me, 'Okay this band thing is cool, but seriously, what are you really going to do?' I can't think of anyone who believed in us, and that was fuel for the fire, because the more anybody said I wouldn't do it, the more I was like, 'No, I'm going to do it.'
I was a rapper. The reason I stopped rapping was because I realized that people wanted guys like Puff Daddy. That's not what I do. I quit. That was it. I had to sacrifice for my choice. I said, 'Forget it. I'll be a producer.' Nobody was going to make me do anything.
My mom had always wanted me to better myself. I wanted to better myself because of her. Now when the strikes started, I told her I was going to join the union and the whole movement. I told her I was going to work without pay. She said she was proud of me. (His eyes glisten. A long, long pause.) See, I told her I wanted to be with my people. If I were a company man, nobody would like me anymore. I had to belong to somebody and this was it right here.
She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable.
I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.
When I went to high school, my most passionate desire was to be a professional baseball player. But something within me told me that was not going to happen.
You see people say: 'He should go back to baseball. He should do this; he should do that.' Those are people who said I would never even make it here. There's always another hurdle to go over, and it's fun to use that as motivation.
Nobody told me there was any idea for a sequel to 'The Exorcist.' But my agent called me to tell me they were going to do it, and there was a part for me. I said, 'But I died in the first film.' 'Well,' he told me, 'this is from the early days of Father Merrin's life.' I told him I just didn't want to do it again.
I criticize a lot of players and coaches. But I back it up with facts. A lot of times guys get mad at me because someone told them what I said. I say, 'You're wrong: Go check the tape.
I criticize a lot of players and coaches. But I back it up with facts. A lot of times guys get mad at me because someone told them what I said. I say, 'You're wrong: Go check the tape.'
When I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.
When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, 'Sexiest Man Alive,' I'm honestly going, 'Thank you. Right on.' For me, it's never canceled out anything, it's never made me go, 'Does this make me less talented of an actor?'
Back at high school, there was this quarterback who asks me out. He's never paid attention to me before, but now we're on this date, going to see the 'Sixth Sense.' And right before the climax, he leans in - and I'm so excited, because I think we're going to French-kiss - and then he tells me the twist. He completely ruins the movie for me.
Am I missing something because of my lack of education? Being an intellectual - I'm not. So I hire him as a corner man, like a boxer; he watches me and tells me what I do wrong before I go in for the next round. Barry thought he was going to write what became Executioner's Song, and I told him he wasn't going to. And Barry's closest friend was Joan Didion.
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