Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 365

"It was amazing to me how actors like Denzel Washington could...

"It was amazing to me how actors like Denzel Washington could reach out and affect people, even in The Gambia where I lived. So I decided I had to be an actor. My father prayed for me for 5 minutes on the runway. He was holding onto my hand and praying over and over, and I could see everyone watching from the windows of the plane. It was a little embarrassing but he would not let go. Finally he told me: ‘Now go to America. But do not forget where you came from.’ I first flew to Oklahoma, because I knew other Gambians there, but I was running out of money, and I was eating nothing but noodles, and one day it got so bad that my nose started bleeding. And I said to myself: ‘How am I going to be an actor in Oklahoma? If I’m going to be hungry, I’m going to be hungry in New York.’ So I borrowed money for a Greyhound bus, and I rode for two days on that bus. And for the whole ride, I had nothing but water."

"I’m trying to get cash flow positive."

"I’m trying to get cash flow positive."

"At the end of my senior year, I took some advanced level entry...

"At the end of my senior year, I took some advanced level entry exams from Cambridge University. They are very difficult and very important. When the exam scores came in, my friend called me and told me that the principal was looking for me. My father was sitting next to me. He saw my face and asked me what was wrong. ‘I think I did very poorly,’ I told him. ‘Because the principal is looking for me.’ He told me that he would come to her office with me to support me. When we got there, there was a huge line of students waiting to get their scores, but the principal called me in. She told me I was one of three students in the school to get all A’s. My father was so nervous when I came out, and when I told him, he hugged me so hard that I could tell he was trying not to cry. He was so happy, he took all the money out of his wallet, handed it to the security guard, and told him to pass it out to everyone in line. It was the happiest moment of my life."

"My father is a surgeon in Pakistan. One day when I was in ninth...

"My father is a surgeon in Pakistan. One day when I was in ninth grade, he picked me up from school, and told me that we needed to check on one of his patients before going home. When we got to the hospital, he asked me if I wanted to come inside. I told him I’d rather wait in the car, but he insisted. He took me up to the room of one of his patients. There was a woman lying in bed. My father had removed a tumor from her face, and then he’d restructured the bone to repair the damage. As soon as the woman saw my father, she started crying and kissing his hand. She’d already paid for the surgery. Yet she was still that grateful. She acted as if he’d given her new life. That was the day I decided I wanted to go into medicine."

"I had a child when I was sixteen. I got kicked out of high...

"I had a child when I was sixteen. I got kicked out of high school because of all the absences. My family and community pretty much wrote me off. But right away I got a job at a sporting goods store. Soon I was able to get a job as a receptionist at a tax company, and they gave me enough responsibilities that I learned how to do taxes. Eventually I learned enough to become an associate. Then I got offered a job at a smaller company, and even though it was a pay cut, they offered me responsibility over all the books— accounts payable, accounts receivable, everything. It was less money but I wanted that experience so I took the risk. And I’m so glad I did, because six months later, the controller of that company left and I was given that position. They told me they couldn’t officially call me the controller because I didn’t have a college degree. So I finished my degree 5 months ago— just to make it official! So after having a child at sixteen, I made it all the way to controller of a company, without even having a college degree. Can you believe that? Honestly, I’ve been waiting to tell that story so long that I told it to a customer service representative on the phone last week. She was nice about it and pretended to care."

Today in microfashion…

Today in microfashion…

"If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of...

"If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?"
"Well, I’m a Christian, so I’d say love one another."
"What do you find hardest about loving other people?"
"Well, I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, so I’d say prejudice."

"I’ve been a deep believer my whole life. 18 years as a...

"I’ve been a deep believer my whole life. 18 years as a Southern Baptist. More than 40 years as a mainline Protestant. I’m an ordained pastor. But it’s just stopped making sense to me. You see people doing terrible things in the name of religion, and you think: ‘Those people believe just as strongly as I do. They’re just as convinced as I am.’ And it just doesn’t make sense anymore. It doesn’t make sense to believe in a God that dabbles in people’s lives. If a plane crashes, and one person survives, everyone thanks God. They say: ‘God had a purpose for that person. God saved her for a reason!’ Do we not realize how cruel that is? Do we not realize how cruel it is to say that if God had a purpose for that person, he also had a purpose in killing everyone else on that plane? And a purpose in starving millions of children? A purpose in slavery and genocide? For every time you say that there’s a purpose behind one person’s success, you invalidate billions of people. You say there is a purpose to their suffering. And that’s just cruel."

"I’ve been trying to change the behavior of addicts my...

"I’ve been trying to change the behavior of addicts my entire life. I actually cofounded a drug and alcohol clinic. But I’ve become convinced that no matter how much you intervene, you can’t change an addict’s behavior. You just have to wait until the addict grows tired of himself."
"So you don’t think your clinic helped anyone?"
"We certainly helped people. But only the ones who came to us on their own accord."

"This is our first date. We met on the bus.""I said all the...

"This is our first date. We met on the bus."
"I said all the right things."
"Whatever, I talked to you first."