When I got out of the army, I had the G.I. Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU, and they took a chance on me and let me in.
To say that I loved school would be an understatement. It was my oasis, my sanctuary.
I was fat and ugly. In school, I was disgustingly obese. I used to be the butt of ridicule, and that made me withdraw into a shell. It made me miserable, unsure of myself. I was far from confident.
I've always thought stability was suffocating and deadly. Like, when I read that the kids I went to law school with have stayed at the same firm, I feel like I'm reading an obituary. How much money do you need? Six million, seven million? Put that in the bank and do something else. Get out!
Regardless of Bill Clinton's politics or personal life, he grew up in obscurity and was elected to the presidency - twice. Don't take that away from him, because then you take it away from every other kid in America sitting out there in a school bus with a big dream.
As I was leaving graduate school in 1974, I was recruited to join a fledgling SETI project at the Hat Creek Observatory in California, mainly because I knew how to program an ancient PDP8/S computer that had been donated to the project.
I didn't go to school a full year until I was 11 or 12, so I lived in books. I really was an observer of life.
When I was in school, they say everybody can do art. And I was, like, a little bit obstinate - not an anarchist, but I was always asking questions. I said, 'Isn't art supposed to be difficult?' If we can all do art, then it's not really art. It's supposed to be difficult.
As a high school dropout, I understand the value of education: A second chance at obtaining my high school diploma through the G.I. Bill led me to attend college and law school and allowed me the opportunity to serve in Congress.
The first time I had a baked potato, I was eight years old at a friend's house. Most white kids growing up have a baked potato every day. I didn't even know what to do with it, how to open it. I was the only white kid in high school eating octopus.
When my kids were in the school play for the first time, I decided I had to make the costumes from scratch and bought material, wadding, dyed T-shirts, and purple tights so I could say I made the octopus costume myself.
I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.
I was involved in school plays, but when I left school I did a couple of odd jobs as a baker's apprentice and then as a fruit market porter in Manchester.
For me to want to play the trumpet was a very, very odd thing for my clan as a whole. One of my uncles was a high school principal, and he referred to my trumpet as a bugle, which really hurt me.
I was definitely the oddball freak show in school.
It was tough for me at school... trying to blend in and get along with other kids. I was an oddity and kids are scared of things they don't understand.
I played high school football at a hundred and eighty-five pounds and played big league baseball at a hundred and eighty-two. I'd get up to maybe 188 in the off-season because every summer I'd lose eight to ten pounds.
In my neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, there were a lot of young kids. We all played tackle football after school, but I knew very early on that I was not an athlete.
Back in '98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station. Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part.
I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school, Grammar School in Melbourne, and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.
