To be told that one can be dependent on one's parents until age 26 should strike a young person who wants to grow up as demeaning, not as something to celebrate.
And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it.
All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?
A lot of people who start work at a very young age never grow up because they never got that opportunity to be a child, so they hold on to that and still do a lot of childish, silly things.
I'd really like to show women my age - who've had children grow up or lost husbands or retired after working all their lives - that there are options. There are choices. We don't have to just sit around and be invisible.
Growing up in Beirut, I used to go to the souks with my mother to buy fabrics... I understood fashion at an early age, and my first designs were when I was five.
I began to speak well at a very advanced age - 15, 16, 17 years old. It was psychological: the trauma of war, my family and growing up on my own. I was more or less a street kid.
You grow up with a heightened sense of the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it wasn't until I became of age that I really had a great appreciation for the struggle that took place.
I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.
I still pinch meself when I wake up of a morning. Who ever thought I'd be a children's author - let alone a best-selling children's author?
I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball.
The thing I like about baseball is that it's one-on-one. You stand up there alone, and if you make a mistake, it's your mistake. If you hit a home run, it's your home run.
The songs, if I write alone in a room, end up being a little more quiet, a little more subdued. If I play with other musicians or percussive instruments, it might end up being a little more upbeat.
Growing up, my mom made us this amazing thing called The Mack Theatrical Wardrobe. It was a massive trunk filled with everything that you'd want as a kid if you were into imagination and play.
My maternal granddad, Leonard, was full of amazing stories. He was an orphan, with 11 or 12 brothers and sisters, and he used to tell us about growing up near the Irrawaddy river and how one brother was eaten by a crocodile.
When we're on set, we kind of joke around, and when we're rehearsing, we change up the scenes and make each other laugh. We lighten up the mood. The blooper reel is going to be amazing on 'New Moon.'
I have a personal trainer who I work out with. She's amazing and as well as making sure I do loads of sit-ups and press-ups, she also keeps an eye on what I eat.
I grew up in a house my parents built together on a mountain in Tennessee. When we moved in, the walls were still going up, we didn't have hot water, and we turned it into an amazing adventure.
These things have a life of there own and never existed when I was growing up certainly worrying when one would get made. It's kind of amazing how that one movie kept living through all these years.
I think we want our kids to grow up to be people who can think outside of the box, be creative and innovators, sort of the forward-thinkers of our future. I think a way to inspire that is through art and music.
Whatever happens in my life, whether I stand up or I fall down, whatever the case, I'm going to use it in my art. Why? Because I'm an artist and I have to.
