Being black in America - especially as I was growing up - the feeling of oppression, the feeling of being outcast, the feeling of not having a voice was part of my life.
I've always been someone who's had to compartmentalize my life because I was in the closet, and I was in fear of outing myself. I always had so much going on in my mind and couldn't share it with anyone, so I actually feel like, now that I'm out, I have less to compartmentalize.
I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.
A classic song is timeless. You'll never outlive a classic song. I'll never put The Beatles 'In My Life' on one day and say, 'That doesnt move me any more.'
For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun.
I've never looked ahead very much in my life. I've never had any grand plan from the outset. I had no burning ambition to do what I do.
If you're an outsider looking into my life, you're thinking, 'That dude is crazy. He's literally crazy.'
I wanted to automate any part of my life that I could. And the over-the-top solutions are more fun than the useful ones.
I want to tell the story. Mostly, when you see rock movies, it has to be this over-the-top thing. I want to give people a Bret Michaels movie where they see that my life is a comedy of errors. I also want to show my fans how to get through the kind of troubles that would leave most people flat on the floor.
I lean into all things that are a little off. I will always wear overalls. At this point, I find a way in most of my life to wear a jumpsuit or an overall, anything that's sort of like an all-in-one situation. I do that on the red carpet a lot.
I've been fighting for my life before and sleeping in cars and trying to find a place to lay my head. I've had situations where I've had nowhere to go. This is the easy part. I overcame life.
I overcame a lot of obstacles in my life and in my childhood.
I was eight when I found out I was adopted. My step-brother told me. He'd overheard my mum and my stepdad at the time talking about it, and he threw it in my face. But I didn't really care. It didn't seem relevant, because I never once in my life felt unloved or like I was a burden.
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.
As a nurturer, I have always lived my life running for others, trying to make everyone happy, even if I often overlooked my own needs. I do it because it makes me happy and fulfilled.
When I grew up, I was living on a council estate overlooking a car park for a good 16 years of my life.
When I look back on my life, I overpaid for my big successes every time. And when I tried to get a bargain, get it a little cheaper or get a better deal on it, I ended up usually either getting it and not happy I got it. Or missing it.
I never rejected religion, but it just ceased to be an overriding concern in my life.
When I wrote my first book, 'The Tennis Party', my overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel. I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not just writing about my life, I'm a real author.'
I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin.
