My grandparents and my mother were marvelous people, but they were not particularly demonstrative in their love. It was teachers who were affectionate and outwardly expressive about that, and encouraging in that way. And of course, you know, I got a ...
I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I've been playing guitar since I was 9.
In my bachelor days, I had a small upright piano in my kitchen. It cost £10 from eBay plus £70 delivery. It was because I'd seen an old photo of Tom Waits - with dirty dishes, empty bottles, a hot plate, a coffee machine and a piano strewn with...
I first saw the island of Noirmoutier when I was two weeks old. I think it's probably safe to say that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time; but I grew to love it as year after year I spent holidays there at my grandparents' cottage.
I always wanted to be a film-maker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on 'The Simpsons,' which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors ...
One of the things I love about working with my brother is that there's a commitment there - an unwavering commitment. From our basement in Illinois when I was three years old to Iceland on a frozen glacier with Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon in s...
Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.
I have learned so much about life by talking to a lot of old people who made a lot of mistakes in their teenage and young adult years. Now I know not to engage myself with the decisions and actions that drove them to some painful consequences.
I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation.
I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.
When I was first starting out, you'd have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody.
When I was young, I despised old people. I was provincial and narrow-minded. It's the reason I stayed stupid so long. If you only get involved with young people you don't learn anything about the world.
Obviously, I'm at the beginning of my career, contrary to what anyone else thinks. I'm 19 years old. In any other country, everywhere else, you're a prospect. And that's what I am right now in Europe. I'm a prospect. I'm not a seasoned veteran.
I wish that the circuses that were around now felt like they did then. They're not quite as elegant or as magical as they used to be. There was something about the old tent shows, the Big Top, the canvas, the lights, the sawdust, the hay and the anim...
You look extremely young," said Miss Nightingale.... "Age isn't really a matter of years, I find," returned Phemie. "I know people twice my age who will never be as old as I am now.
My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.
My stepfather met my mother when I was seven years old, and he was a guitar player. So he caught me messing with his guitar, his electric guitar, and he tried to show me some chords, but my hands were too small.
I moved up over Lower East Side and I was adopted by eight foster parents; I lived all over New York City with these parents, man, till I was about ten years old.
I think America understands that energy security is a very important part of our national security. But if we are going to address energy security in a meaningful way going forward, we need to do it in a new manner. We cannot just be doing the same o...
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistake of our own period. And that means the old books...
I grew up in Georgia, and I started acting in plays when I was like eight years old, and I always memorized everyone's parts, not just my own, and I always memorized everyone's blocking. Whenever anyone wasn't there, I would always jump in. I was ver...