I lost in the second round of the French Open and had 10 days off. I went to the Hard Rock Cafe. It was exciting to be away from my parents, to stay in a hotel. Hotels at 17 meant freedom.
Growing up, I didn't come from a musical family. Neither of my parents played an instrument, sang out loud, or listened to the radio with frequency. The record collection in the living room was only about 2 feet long - and that included 4 solid inches of Neil Diamond and Herb Alpert.
I still frequent my parents' house. I go there to escape, back to the bedroom that I grew up in. Just to sit there and feel small.
I changed high schools three times because my parents moved. I had one friend my freshman year named Miki Vukovich. Miki and I were the only skaters in our high school. He runs my foundation now.
If politics were a high school movie, Republicans would be the jocks and mean girls locking hapless freshmen inside their lockers and threatening to call in their rich parents if the teachers complain - plus the broke kids who are always willing to strong-arm homework for them from the nerds.
As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.
Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it.
My parents used to call me 'The Little Frog,' because whenever they asked how I knew something, I'd say 'read it,' which sounds a bit like a frog croak.
We always had so many kids in our family, running around the yard, sweaty little kids jumping in and out of the pool, the front door and back doors swinging open and shut, all of the parents getting pissed off telling us to stay outside.
My favorite holiday memory was sitting at home all day in my pajamas during winter break for school watching a bunch of old Christmas movies like 'Jack Frost' and 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' with my siblings and parents.
Small, slow growth is the best I expect from an investment. I'm a real saver: frugal - like my parents.
My parents were both in the army for 20 years and then worked in government departments; but they had gone through the Great Depression and known lean times. They always remained extremely frugal and lived far below their means.
My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them.
It's inevitable that we'll have some form of designer children, fueled not just by the science but by parents' hard-wired desire to give their children every advantage.
I grew up in a family where my parents worked full-time and still found themselves and their six children trapped like so many of the working poor.
They've got great parents; I'm just trying to be the fun uncle.
My parents always pushed creativity on us, but they made it seem like the fun thing to do.
I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.
That's the funniest thing about portraying certain things on screen, sitting next to your parents and they get to see this glimpse of me kissing another guy.
My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.
