My grandfather was a massive influence in my music. Growing up, he would play a lot of old-school records to me. A lot of jazz and swing music, actually, growing up.
I was a kid who got picked on in school, and now the guys beating up those kids were wearing red caps and using my music to fuel that aggression. But if they listen to the lyrics, the aggression is targeted at them.
For me, music was the only reason I went to school. I was kind of a street kid, in a lot of trouble committing crimes and stuff. Music gave me something to focus on.
Apart from two periods of intense study, of music between the ages of 12 and 14 and of mathematics between the ages of 14 and 16, I coasted, daydreaming, through most of my school years.
As an example, one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports, but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests.
We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners.
When a music teacher that I had at school was taken ill and we had a variety show and I had to fill in - that's when I realized I had a voice.
Because I gave myself - I left school after the second semester of my junior year to pursue a career in music. and I gave myself five years to make it and I made it in three.
I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.
There have been some medical schools in which somewhere along the assembly line, a faculty member has informed the students, not so much by what he said but by what he did, that there is an intimate relation between curing and caring.
If you went to Harvard Medical School, chances are you'll be a doctor at some place. There's a career trajectory. Acting, there's nothing. It's constantly trying to procure jobs - it's very disconcerting.
Harvard Medical School, the University of South Florida and the American Psychiatric Association have all conducted studies showing that the earlier one begins gambling, the more likely it is he or she will become an addicted, problem gambler.
When the children were very small, I worked in the morning only, and then gradually, as they spent full days at school, I could spend full days at work.
I went to dance classes from 9 in the morning until 1, then to school from 3 to 10 at night, always under the threat that if I failed a single course I could forget about dancing.
Women are just much better at getting degrees than men. It seems that school at every level plays to the natural strengths of women more than it does to men.
On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.
What you have is two men seeking the White House; they're both products of prominent New England families. They both went to private boarding schools. They both went to a prestigious university.
After I graduated high school and came out to do 'Buffy,' I was enrolled at my mom's university, and I was going to go get a real job. I never thought of acting and never really wanted to be an actor.
I actually got started in acting when I was in pre-school. I was really into dance and performing, so my mom had me in dance classes, and then I got involved in a local theater company.
I wanted to escape so badly. But of course I knew I couldn't just give up and leave school. It was only when I heard my mom's voice that I came out of my hiding place.
I feel like a lot of my past career was going to film school, making a lot of different kinds of movies. I made a bunch of comedies, I made one drama and I made a couple musicals.
