Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
I went to parochial grammar school, and I give thanks to the Catholic training because of course, they brought me to the heart of Jesus.
In my youngest days, the nuns at my grammar school drummed into us that we were in this world to make it a better place - not just for ourselves, but for other people, too. So from the very beginning, I've been driven by this idea that we have to make a difference, and it's one of the reasons I went into law in the first place.
My parents were the first in our family to go to grammar school. My grandparents were in service.
I used to hang out with grandfather all the time because he used to pick me up from school sometimes, or drive me to my mother's, so I'd be with my grandfather a lot. I used to watch him write his sermons.
Looking back at my school reports, I start off as quite a swotty kid, and then when I get to 12 or 13, my teachers start saying: 'Lee has started to joke around a lot in class.' After that, it's a steady graph of decline, with the jokes increasing and increasing.
I have been fully involved in designing my stage shows; it's important to me to do something really unique and almost off-the-wall to bring the music and the visuals together. I love design and actually went to school for a bit for graphic design, so it isn't so much 'pressure' for me; it's a way to be creative, and I really enjoy it.
I wrestled in high school, so I actually have a bit of a base in grappling.
Even in high school, music was just a really fun thing on the side. I don't think I grasped the fact that it could be a profession.
I unloaded planes for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky. It only was bad because it was called 'Earn to Learn,' where you pay for your tuition for college, but you have to work graveyard shift - midnight to eight A.M. - and then go to school at nine or 10 A.M. I was a zombie after two semesters.
I sort of tried to get a basketball scholarship out of high school, but that didn't happen. Then I started working for UPS, and that paid for tuition for school. I moved to a bigger town, Louisville. I did it for a year. I had to work the graveyard shift. And then you get off at eight for classes, so that sucked. Then I dropped out.
Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up. Longitudinal studies following thousands of people across time have shown that most people only begin to gravitate toward certain vocational interests, and away from others, around middle school.
You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around.
I've been embracing gray hair since... high school, and I don't think that anything's changed since then.
School is a scary place for kids. So I didn't like it, and I didn't want to be there. And it was a great day for me when they threw me out.
I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.
I was never involved in any fights in high school. I'm glad I wasn't. I'm not very big, and I don't find great joy in cuts and bruises.
I went to jazz school. Not to say I'm a great jazz musician, but I studied under some great teachers. It was an important part of my life.
You can have great teachers, but if you don't have a good principal, you won't have a good school.
To this end the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.
