A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man - the one he used to be.
When I was a boy, I had a baseball team of my own. We played on a vacant lot between Ninetieth and Ninety-second streets. I had a little menagerie of my own, some pigeons, guinea pigs, and so on. On Saturday mornings, I had to take my music lesson. Then the members of my team used to come see my menagerie.
I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.
As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool.
Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels.
I felt really lucky that 'Hairstyles Of The Damned' and 'The Boy Detective Fails' were both bestsellers, and I thought that donating the money from 'Demons' was a good way to respond to that. My favorite artists are the ones that are willing to experiment, even if it means a smaller audience.
Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one.
If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.
I used to have Bible studies at my house. I was in the choir. I was mischievous but also a real mama's boy. It was a pretty happy childhood.
My father is a very hardworking guy, and that's his focus in life, so I got a lot of the paternal attention that a boy wants and needs from my grandfather.
When I was a boy, my family used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy.
I have what is probably the largest big bike collection in the city: a Fat Boy, a sportser Harley Davidson and two Yamahas. All these are 1200cc-plus bikes. Riding these bikes is something I still do and some trekking as well.
Restaurants are like having children: it's fun to make them, maybe, but then you have them for good and bad. You are going to have to raise them and if something goes wrong when they are 30 years old, they will still be your little boy.
As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I'd say I was Hawaiian.
You want to know what makes me tick, I'll tell you what makes me tick. I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn; I read a two-penny magazine called 'The Hawk's Nest.' Nobody entered that nest that didn't leave a little richer and a little wiser. And that 11-year-old boy said, 'Isn't that a wonderful thing.' And that's all there is to it.
When I was15 years old, I couldn't look at the NFL and look on TV and say, 'Boy, there's a head coach, African American. That's something I'd like to do.'
I love the chocolate boy image. I love my heartthrob image.
You're supposed to create new standards. The more you play songs by your peers, they become standards, you know? Miles Davis played 'Gingerbread Boy' 'cos he and Jimmy Heath were cool, you know? That's how the culture goes.
For the women in California, they're just downtrodden because they're so gorgeous here. Every hot cheerleader comes to California to make it. The men don't want to get married, they're lazy lions. Matthew McConaughey is their poster boy so they can procreate and live on the beach in the trailer and have kids and have money and be hedonistic.
Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy.
