As a kid, I liked to write, but I didn't think that was a viable career choice. My dream, actually, was to be a white girl rapper and join Salt-N-Pepa - which obviously was a much more viable career choice.
I didn't know what gay was. There was no such thing when I was growing up. I knew I had crushes on boys, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with that until I started to hear about it from the other kids in school.
I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid's a hard worker, he's talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.
Lee Ann Womack is from near where I grew up in East Texas, so I've always looked up to her. I sang a lot of Dolly Parton as a kid and a lot of traditional western swing, like Patsy Cline and Roy Rogers.
I don't know the capabilities of our enemies. But I found it quite easy to circumvent security at certain phone companies throughout the United States. So if an inquisitive kid can do it, why can't a cyberterrorist do it?
I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.
When I was a kid, people people would always say, 'Oh you look like Chilli from TLC.' It wasn't until I did 'Akeelah and the Bee' that people started saying I looked like Angela Bassett, but before then it was Chilli.
I've never really had a first date! Well, I had kind of a first date. I went out with this kid. We went ice skating, but it was not fun. It was so terrible that I told him my curfew was a lot earlier than it really was.
I signal with an independent label, Continuum. After that I put out a totally independent record, sold fourteen thousand of them from my basement, bought a house, started raising my kid, made a decent living.
I'm very comfortable as a singer. In fact, I think it's more - I identified my self-esteem, my self more in those ways when I was growing up. I really - it was kind of my calling card as a kid.
I guarantee whenever I get married or have a baby, everyone is going to want to know my kid's name and I'm not going to say it for ages. That's just the way I want to do it. It'll come out but it won't have come from me.
I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.
I've always fought for what I believe in. I used to get made fun of for dancing, and I would argue back, or fight the kids, or do whatever I had to do to shut them up. I have that in me.
Tennis was more than a passing interest, but I found my ability didn't measure up to these West Coast kids who had played 12 months a year and taken it much more seriously than I.
We've fallen down on our responsibility to our children by somehow creating this world where they're surrounded by images of sexuality; and yet, we as adults struggle to talk to kids honestly about sex, the rules of dignity and consent.
When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn't afford a ticket.
That was kind of scary. You got the sense as a little kid that you might be at risk now, and then you're like, 'Why are we at risk? It's because my grandfather is in charge of all of this.' You can't really realize the magnitude of a job like that wh...
When kids can't afford to see it anymore maybe we'll have a whole resurgence of garage bands all over America and this New Wave thing will start to mean something on a grass roots level.
You look at my audience, and it proves what Congress thinks America is, is wrong. I get people across the political spectrum. Parents and kids come and they're all punked out, and there are these other guys in John Deere caps.
I think being mean to people in high school is healthy. It's sort of like you're in this situation with all these other kids and sometimes you need to get your aggression out. And if you'd had people be mean to you before, it really does build charac...
I don't think I ever set my goals that high. As a kid growing up I just wanted an opportunity to race and to be able to make a living doing it. It just came together.
