My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
When I was four years old, some friends of my family took me to see 'Fantasia' and I was totally blown away. From that minute on I wanted to be an animator.
You can draw Family Guy when you're 10 years old. You don't have to get any better than that to become a professional cartoonist. The standards are extremely low.
How do you rebel in a family of rebels? That's the age-old question. I guess I could have by not going into the arts, but the thing is, I couldn't do anything else.
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
I don't know anything about cars. A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I'm not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.
We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we'd been performing that, but we don't do that any more.
That was the fun of acting, being a blank canvas you could transform into the character - Indian princess, 20s vamp, Mother Courage, Oxford don, 94-year-old wife.
At about twelve I just knew, something clicked, and I knew I wanted to be an actor and my parents, to their credit, granted this 12 year old girl a chance to give it a try.
And when I was saying I want to become number one of the world and I was 7, 8 years old, most of the people were laughing to me. Because you know, it seemed like I have one percent chances to do that. And I've done it.
I think I'm so old I'm in. We call it the 'Tony Bennett Syndrome.' For some reason, young people think I'm cool.
Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, 'Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.' Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too!
It's cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn't sound too bad.
The old adage that you shouldn't change a winning team doesn't apply in modern international football because managers have to study the opposition and pick players who exploit their weaknesses.
The healthcare bill not only is a monstrosity in terms of growing the government and cutting out the private sector, the way it was passed was sleazy. Every old Washington trick was used to pass the healthcare bill.
Reviewing a government budget is much like going through the attic in an old home.
For example, lead paint in old houses can be a greater threat to children's health than lead that may be under some industrial site where there are no children.
I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.
I'll be 50 years old and still have to call my mom when I'm home at night. No matter what time, she doesn't sleep until I do!
I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena, but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here.
No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
