For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin' down there and making that my stomping ground... That was a big thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So...
Growing up, I started developing confidence in what I felt. My parents helped me to believe in myself. I wasn't the best looking guy, I wasn't the best athlete in the world, but they made me feel good about myself.
The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn't supposed to be in!
I have nothing but the best memories of growing up in New Jersey. Of course, I grew up in a nice town, a suburb. But Tenafly was right next to Englewood, which had a tremendous amount of racial tension in the '60s. So I was aware of the real world.
Growing up, I had a very normal relationship with my brother and sister. But, over time, they became my best friends, and now I hang out with them all the time. I'm very close with them.
When grandpa was ill and could've died, I would have swapped all my record sales so he could get well. He is the reason I am a singer. He was my best friend growing up.
Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore.
When you're growing up, you play dress-up - it's a game, it's a pastime. And then as you get older, getting ready and looking nice becomes this constant stress. I want to make it fun again.
You don't need to come from poverty to say growing up is tough. You can have everything in the world going for you and still feel the same loneliness and the same problems that a lot of kids have.
Angry Birds is one of the fastest-growing online products I've seen, growing even faster than Skype, and the company has done a brilliant job of extending it across different platforms and merchandise.
I never was a big comic book fan. Obviously I'd heard them growing up from my friends who did read them, but I never was a big comic book reader.
Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.
I'm not someone who has had to deal with much personal drama outside of the usual: growing up with parents who hated each other, two marriages and divorces of my own. There was the cancer thing, too.
You have to remember that when I met Elvis, you know, it wasn't the fanfare that it is today or even when he was here in the states and I was in Germany growing up.
I can't tell you how many people would say to me as a teenager, 'Why don't you grow up and start thinking about getting a real job?'
When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion.
While growing up in Birmingham around a lot of West Indian people, reggae and calypso were big influences early on but Otis Redding was the one person who made me wanna sing myself.
The sun, rising and setting in splendid colors, never grows tired of its admirers―much like a lady, aglow with grace, never grows tired of chivalrous acts or pretty flowers.
My parents have mellowed quite a bit, but, growing up, there was a sense that the only real professions were doctor, engineer, lawyer. Those were your choices.
It looks as though yields of over 10 times what we can currently grow per acre are feasible if you control the CO2 concentration, the humidity, the temperature, all the various factors that plants depend on to grow rapidly.
Buffy's very similar to me to me when I was growing up. A child in an adult world, sort of trapped between the two. Does Buffy go to the prom or does she save the world from demons?
