Topher Grace Quotes

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

I'm a dreamer, and I'm a perfectionist, and I love excellence, and that's hardwired in me. But when I was young, I lived in a space for a long time where I only felt insufficient.

I never dreamed I'd be in Congress, or even in the NFL, for that matter. Well, I guess I dreamed about being in the NFL, but I didn't believe it would happen. I'm not the biggest guy. But I guess that's the story of my life.

Look at me - I was the boo boy for years and years. Did I ever think I would end up in Hollywood or the FA Cup final? No, I didn't.

We may have limped onto Broadway as the underdogs, but underdogs bite back occasionally.

In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.

I would never know how good I was if I didn't have Bob Arum. Bob Arum is white, Jewish; He was working for prosecutor's office. I'm black, an ex-convict, ex-number runner. Who would be most likely to succeed? It would be Bob 100-1. Yet I beat Bob on everything we ever done, with love.

They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.

A misfit like me getting anywhere in Hollywood as I somehow have, seemed, certainly at the time of 'Spanking The Monkey,' kind of out of reach, or not a very realistic take.

Nobody really thought I was going to make it, because I was a musician. I really wasn't a singer.

I like to think that even if we make some really bad choices and go down some bad paths, we'll eventually emerge from it.

Everyone hits bottom their own way.

So I kind of lost track for a while, then I came back, I pulled myself together and I decided when I was 15 that I'm going to get sober and I'm going to become an actress.

There is a very good chance I could have been a screw-up for the rest of my life.

I hated high school and got to college and realized they didn't care if I showed up because I'd already paid. So I decided, 'I'm going to turn this around.' And I did: I got straight A's and was named 'outstanding senior.'

It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.

I wasn't academically successful. And maybe I've spent a lot of my career trying to make up for that.

At school, nobody thought I was smart and I became smart. Nobody wanted to be my friend and then I had lots of friends.

My chief identity, to my mind, was not 'writer' but 'college dropout.'

By my mid-20s, I was a total mess.

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.

I was a very repressed young person. I wasn't good at school. I didn't fit in.

I'm not talented enough to drop everything and become somebody different.

After five years in prison, five years on parole, and a total of 10 years of being in hell, I can look back on it all and say I played in four NFL games. It's incredible.

I'm the only member of the house, who at age 16, and pregnant, was told in no uncertain terms, I'd never amount to anything.