My parents were pretty lenient with me. But, they gave me morality while I was growing up. They taught me the difference between right and wrong.
My gun trainer on the first 'G.I. Joe' gave me about a week of commando training, so I got to shoot every single machine gun and hand gun there was.
My mother gave me a sense of independence, a sense of total confidence that we could do whatever it was we set out to do. That's how we were raised.
The artist who gave me the most inspiration and direction, especially as a singer - and I absolutely consider myself a singer, 100 percent - is Nina Simone. She's my ultimate pianist-singer-type person.
Being 5' 10, I was supposed to be too short to play college volleyball. So that gave me the hunger and the fire to say, Oh yeah? I'd just hit the crap out of the ball.
When I was growing up, I always knew I'd be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.
The defeat of the Americans in Canada and the advantages gained by the British arms in the Jerseys, and indeed for some months in every other quarter, gave to the royal cause an air of triumph.
The traumatized soul finds no rest in conditions of peace. It’s forever questing for violence, for action, for the same combination of factors which gave rise to it in the first place.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and then throw it in the face of the person who gave you the lemons until they give you the oranges you originally asked for.
If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.
Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.
How did the Oscar change my life? What it did was that it gave me a new reality. And it let me know that an award wasn't going to change my life - that I had to be in control of changing my life.
I feel like it's important to use this gift God gave me, my life and my career to do something to make the world a better place. It's an easy thing for me to do.
If they want to talk about aliens and anything like that... that's part of the gift God gave us. That's what makes life exciting. We're pretty stuck, you know. What gives flight to our life is our imagination.
I didn't have a regular school experience and wanted a more abstract way of learning. I started exploring in lots of different creative ways. It gave me the opportunity to travel and play music, so it was good for me.
When my mother was dying, I cooked for her. One of the things I realised was that the smell and look of the food was key. I concentrated on how it looked on the plate. Even if the amount was small, it gave her a nourishment of a different kind.
I hope that more children have the same opportunities as me, with the same parents as me, that let me be an individual, who gave me freedom, and taught me to believe in myself before anyone else would believe in me.
Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.
When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.
I'm totally grateful for the fans my family has and I have; they gave me a lot of support when I was in treatment. But it was just odd, you know? It's stressful. Just the whole fact of being someone in the public eye.
