Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
I didn't go to university. I studied theatre in high school and worked with Canberra Youth Theatre and The Street Theatre and other theatre organisations in Canberra, and that's how I got my training.
I did a show called 'Freaks and Geeks' when I was very young. And I had the naivete and arrogance of youth. You know, I really assumed that when the show got cancelled, like, oh, it doesn't matter, you just keep rolling, you know. I'm about to be the biggest star of the world. And then I was met with five years of unemployment.
If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.
I really miss my youth. I'm not being ungrateful, but there was an Atif who used to roam the streets, who didn't care whether his photograph was taken or not, who used to hang out without people staring at him. I miss that carefree life and would give anything for it, even if it only lasts a few moments.
One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.
New Orleans is a great place, a place of celebration. But on the other hand, there's a reality to it, there's violence, there's misguided youth.
When I was going through school, I joined the Lyceum Youth Theatre, and that kind of cemented it. Through being in and around the building and watching shows, I realised that there was something I really loved about it, so I went into the stage management side.
You gotta bear in mind, the youth - and this is just in Britain alone - have nowhere to go in the evenings. They've closed all the social centers. There's not even a patch of grass to kick a ball on.
Since the age of four, I've been exploring what I can do with the written word: everything from championing literacy and youth voice to raising awareness about world hunger.
The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
I had the pleasure, as Robin said, to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity.
I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.
In school, I always sang in choirs. In fact, I used to do a lot of musicals in the youth theatre that I was a member of between the ages of 16 and 18.
In my youth, cinemas showed two films in one day. I used to watch both of them. It may sound strange, but 'West Side Story' was the only musical I liked. I didn't like musicals, or films with songs, at all. I always thought they were not real, that the songs sounded a little bit false. But in the case of 'West Side Story,' things were different.
I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.
But we had a fantastic coach, Simon Clifford, who runs a British football youth game which teaches Brazilian techniques - which is what we wanted to incorporate into the film. And some of those things we eventually got in.
The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'
