When I finally decided that my only hope was to go to college, I took an acting class, and once I walked onstage, I just knew I was home.
Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.
When I achieved the European record for reciting pi in 2004, this captured the imagination of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen in Cambridge, and he finally diagnosed me with Asperger's that year.
When I was about 17 or 18, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to change. I didn't know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career.
I really loved to sing all the time, and I was constantly entertaining. Finally, my dad saw an article in the local newspaper in Phoenix, and it was for a children's theater, an audition for 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.'
I started kite boarding when I was 13. My dad was a kite boarder, and I begged him to teach me until he finally agreed. He made me wait because it can be dangerous.
The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote.
Research challenges the materialistic understanding of death, according to which biological death represents the final end of existence and of all conscious activity.
Finally, I would like to remind record companies that they have a cultural responsibility to give the buying public great music. Milking a trend to death is not contributing to culture and is ultimately not profitable.
Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.
I can have my goals, and I can have my dreams. My goal is to make the finals and improve my position. I want to run all decent races. I don't want to look back and say I ran a terrible race.
As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.
As a great man's influence never ends, so also there is not definite finality, no end, to a great survey; it runs along for centuries, ever responsive to the strain of the increasing needs of a growing population and an enlarging domain.
I had one particular handbag disaster when I couldn't get into it, and when I finally did, it flew over the red carpet and was caught by 200 lenses. Not a great moment.
Nothing would make me happier if Peter Falk would finally win his Oscar for this. Not just as the writer but as a fan and a friend. It would be so great.
For me, it's great to see 'Gateways' finally make it to the console. Think of it as 'Portal' meets 'Castlevania' as you try to put together your gateway gun before your lab becomes overrun with nasty enemies.
It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.
We live in this world of great promise, where everything seems to offer an unchanging final happiness, if we can only get enough of it. It is very intoxicating.
The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.
A good designer has a lot in common with a good researcher. Both hunt for excellence and perfection. And you have to really focus on the details, and you don't really know what the final result will be before you have it.
I'd rather be able to play great tennis at a slam than make eight finals of little tournaments and then lose first round of a slam. That doesn't sound too good.
