Great pressure is put on kids who don't have dads to get out and make money, and make life easier for everybody. It was always, 'Hurry up, grow up, make money, there's no man to do it for us.'
I grew up on the west side of Detroit - 6 mile and Wyoming - so I was really in the 'hood. And I would go to school at Detroit Waldorf, and that was not the 'hood. Growing up in Detroit was good. I had a good perspective, a well-rounded one, and not ...
Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess.
In a way, I had a very good and normal childhood. I had loving and caring parents. But I had a lot of quirks or problems when I was growing up. I had phobias and obsessions.
I finally did work out a very good relationship with my father, but it was rough growing up. We had a lot of conflict, and I think it surfaced in many of my works.
I loved movies. They inspired me more than anything growing up and wanted to do for others what those movies have done for me. I do a lot of other creative stuff but am not very good at it.
You grow up a bit damaged or broken then you have some success but you don't know how to feel good about the work you're doing or the life you're leading.
Conway Twitty was always our local hero while I was growing up. He had a series of good bands. I wanted to sit in, if Conway would let me. And he did a couple of times.
Growing up, I think I was arrested 20-odd times by the Boston police. The good news is that I've been able to use those experiences in a lot of my roles, and that has been a blessing.
There's very little you're not exposed to in New York City, in terms of ideas and physical things - sights, sounds, smells, different kinds of people. But one good thing about growing up fast is you get over it fast, too.
Fairy tales were important to me. Aren't they for any kid? My sister says I spent a good five years of my youth convinced I would grow up to be a princess.
I had years of therapy to recover from this. A lot of it had to with being a people pleaser, being the ultimate good girl. I wanted everyone to like me. I didn't really have a voice. I was afraid of growing up.
Manners is the key thing. Say, for instance, when you're growing up, you're walking down the street, you've got to tell everybody good morning. Everybody. You can't pass one person.
When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.
When we were growing up our parents somehow made it clear that being famous was good. And I mistakenly thought that if I was famous then everyone would love me.
So I'm a young boy in the 1940s growing up, seeing Ralph Bunche on a regular basis, seeing Duke Ellington on a regular basis. We know that these people are famous. They're living in the same community as we live in. They go to the same stores and sho...
When all is said and done, the greatest satisfaction you'll have in this life as you grow old will be seeing your children grow in righteousness and faith and goodness as citizens of the society of which they are a part.
Is letting our children watch TV a form of child abuse? If our children grow up knowing everything about Britney Spears and nothing about nature or faith, about anything, is that not a form of child abuse?
What I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift. Those values have stuck with me my whole life.
The spiritual ambiguity growing up made me really latch onto a faith - Protestantism - that was somewhat conventional. Everyone else was rebelling against traditions and institutions, whereas I was rebelling against the upheaval and uncertainty in my...
At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future.
