Breakups just hit you harder when you're younger. When I was a teenager, it felt like the most depressing thing in the world if a boy I was infatuated with didn't like me back!
I was super brainy and a proper geek at school, but there would always be a boy. But that sort of obsession did turn me into a songwriter. My writing has always come from that feeling of infatuation.
What I was told by my parents was that, you know, take this inhibition out whether you're a girl or a boy. Basically, pursue your dream, and as long as you're a capable and hardworking human being, you will be able to follow and fulfill your dream.
We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.
Being in this fine mood, I spoke to a little boy, whom I saw playing alone in the road, asking him what he was going to be when he grew up. Of course I expected to hear him say a sailor, a soldier, a hunter, or something else that seems heroic to childhood, and I was very much surprised when he answered innocently, 'A man.'
Breaking gender norms just comes instantly as soon as a boy is comfortable and confident enough to put on makeup.
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
I remember, when we started 'Leverage,' we were all in Chicago, and I read the script for the pilot and thought, 'Boy, this is just a real interesting place to begin a character.' I had to figure out how to go about playing someone who had hit rock bottom.
I just write characters, and somehow they happen to be a boy and a girl. When the story is put together, and their characters interwoven, they do end up together somehow.
When I was 14 years old, I was talking about much more mature things because of the writers that I had at the time. My first album was tied into what the culture was at that moment, which was Jodeci, Al B. Sure, Puff, The Hitmen. I reaped the benefits of being part of Bad Boy's movement. That was my introduction.
I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.
America is dumb. It's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you - aggressive. My daughter is four; my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy - a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling, and then get out.
In 1953 there were two ways for an Irish Catholic boy to impress his parents: become a priest or attend Notre Dame.
I never really knew what fine cuisine was when I was a little boy in Canada. For me, Italian food was 'Kraft Dinner' or pizza. When I moved to New York, that's when I discovered all the Italian food.
I'm a city boy, born and brought up in Mumbai. I talk fast, have a certain sense of humour, and have grown up watching Jackie Chan movies.
I'm a comedian. Comedians are supposed to be jaded, cynical, angry people. But I'm not: I'm a silly, silly fun boy.
James Taylor may be an all-American boy but he isn't Horatio Alger, and the lionizing of many rock stars by the rock press has as much to do with old fashioned rags-to-riches stories as does the straight culture's deification of its idols.
I remember my own life as a small boy, son of Jewish immigrants, in a janitor's flat on Orchard and Stanton streets on the Lower East Side of New York City. My father made pants and doubled as janitor of a tenement - before he made janitoring at $30 a month, plus rooms, a career.
I love the scent of jasmine, honeysuckle, and orange blossom. They remind me of gardens and visits to the ocean I would make as a boy.
For any child, boy or girl, a father is both Jedi and Sith: Obi-Wan Kenobi - gentle and calming and good - and Vader, fierce and terrifying.
