I lived in a hut with no roof, and I rode to school on a donkey. I used to shoot birds with a slingshot to cook for dinner. Now I prefer to get my food from KFC.
The senseless killing of 20 children and their teachers and principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not part of God's grand plan. It was a thwarting of God's plan. It was the misuse of human freedom.
The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.
This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.
I really don't like to do back-to-back movies. I concentrate on things at home. My family and school life are important to me. I try to do one movie a year.
As a little girl in Arizona, none of the women in my family had a cultural connection with Girl Scouts, but the opportunity resonated with my mother as a platform that would allow me to excel in school.
Every Maryland family wants financial security, schools that work, quality healthcare, safer neighborhoods, and ever-expanding economic opportunity. These are the building blocks of a superior quality of life.
Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.
Anything that you can become obsessed with, and you do so much that you don't do the things you need to do with family, friends, school, job - that can be an addiction. And texting absolutely can qualify.
If I didn't have a scholarship to go to the University of Florida or any school, I probably would have considered the military because my family could not afford to send me to college.
A rumor that followed me forever was that my family was in the mafia. For years I had to live with it. They'd call me the mafia princess, so I rolled with it for the rest of high school. People even joke about it today.
I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
Being sent away to boarding school at seven is as great an inspiration as any songwriter could have - to be taken away from one's family and locked away for 10 years. It does create an incredible intensity of emotion.
None of our family businesses were focused on technology. It was '93 when I came out of law school, and the Internet was taking hold. So I started New World Ventures.
I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that's all I ever was associated with.
I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very 'Glee.'
Growing up in a multicultural family, I never really felt that I was different - even though I was from most of the kids in my school. Especially with music, I try to just approach it as an equal.
All of my books are based in some way on my personal experiences, or the experiences of members of my family, or the stories kids would tell me in school.
I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.
I grew up in a strongly socialist family. While I was at school, I worked in party politics and with organizations like the Anti-Nazi League. Everywhere I saw it, I fought prejudice.
It's a big deal to bring your family on the road, you know? I'd love to do it sometime, but you have to work out schools and all that.
