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" The lifestyle that I grew up in, it was passed on to me. I didn't know there was another world. "

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" In society, you are taught to belong. You have to belong to something. "

" Through sharing my pain, I can possibly heal your pain. There is no other feeling like it. Money doesn't compare. This is the true meaning of art. "

" I'm definitely not joking around on set. "

" My family had been involved in gangs since the 1970s. "

" I believe God talks to us in mysterious ways. I knew if I did not pay attention to His message, I was going to do life in prison, or I was going to end up dead. "

" My father figures were all gang members. "

" I grew up in East Los Angeles, which is the biggest population of Mexican-Americans in America. I was born and raised there. "

" No one cares about you when you're in jail. "

" The true meaning of an artist/actor is opening my heart to the audience and, at the same time, opening their heart. "

" I can't point my finger on a 'dream role,' but the days that I'm able to fulfill the stories of the 'hood/barrio on film, those will be great days. "

" The agricultural fields throughout the Southwest, those jobs needed to be filled, and who were the ones to do it? It was the Mexicans. "

" I really embrace the person and the life that I came from because that made me who I am today. "

" In this society, you have to belong to something, I feel, and all we have in the neighborhood is a gang. "

" It's about being a voice in the community. There's so many ways to be a voice, and that's what I'm figuring out. "

" I didn't know that I could be an actor until I was 25 years old, and now I continue to go back to the prisons and probation camps and the inner city to say that you don't have to go through the violence, through the trauma like I did. "

" I spent my life behind bars, and what people don't know is getting out of prison is really nerve-racking - you're not used to society; you're not used to the world going by so fast - so to step on that lot was quite overwhelming. "

" There's comes a point when people who have lived a life of crime get tired and want to change. "

" It's nothing like changing or helping a person find themselves, but who would've thought that I would make it to a point in my life where somebody would be naming a damn burrito after me. "

" I remember my first thing was 'CSI: Miami.' I played a Cuban gangster. And that was it. I was like, 'Wow, I don't have to clean toilets.' I could actually dress up and get paid equivalent to that. So that was my introduction into the Hollywood industry. "

" Being an artist, being an actor, it's about telling stories that could heal, that could open up discussion that could make the community better. "

" I was one step away from getting my life taken away, whether it was life in prison or being dead on the streets. But I was saved. "

" I didn't grow up with any brothers, but I have my cousins, and I had my good friends, so I know what it is to have that bro relationship. "

" Nobody succeeds on their own. Someone has to be there to show them the way, and if you give that experience to a person on the street - a gang member, a prisoner - he might succeed. That's how it was for me. "

" Art saved my life. "