In skating or any amateur sport, as athletes we share something in common: the cost of training is quite a burden on our parents or on the athletes themselves trying to find a way to pay for their costs.
A man desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of success.
I have olive trees and have tried my hand at curing small batches of olives, with varying degrees of success. So sometimes there are leftover olives I use in pasta sauce because they didn't quite make the grade.
Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.
Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
The social and physical construction of suburban America really was quite complex. It was a very elaborate system, and clearly a massive social engineering project that has changed U.S. society enormously.
If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher, I would have said you're out of your mind, because quite frankly I hated school.
The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known. But when I see other people's upbringings, I think, 'Hmm... mine was rather unconventional. Quite different!'
But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!
I love Yves Saint Laurent and Giambattista Valli and Givenchy, and I get given quite a lot, but perhaps nothing is as wonderful as the white fake leather trench coat I got when I was 15.
I think theater will always be my first love. I've been doing it since I was nine, and there's nothing quite like being on stage, having the immediate intake of energy and exchange of ideas.
Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.
This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn't otherwise get to hear music on quite this level.
I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.
I'd forgotten what it was like to play music and have it be fun so I decided to stop. I wasn't even sure if I was going to make a new record, I was just kinda quitting.
My mum especially listens to music in a way that is incredibly feelings-based. There's virtually no snobbery about what sounds are in it, she just wants to hear a song and that is quite refreshing.
I'm amazed at how adventurous and how dangerous the music was, and still is. I haven't heard anything like it since. I'm quite surprised, because a lot of the music on there we never heard at the time.
I'm very honest in my music and I'm often asked to explain the lyrics; as an introvert, I find that quite hard. And I always wear high heels on stage, which can be painful.
The music industry over there seems to treat America like it's one territory even though they got offices in different parts of America - they're still quite sort of 'America is the territory.'
Let's be honest: the trappings of investment banking are quite tempting. I do miss it sometimes. And to be honest, there was a time I'd read the 'WSJ' in the morning, and for years I have done that.
We are also fortunate in being in quite a sheltered environment, in terms of people moving on to do other things, because there are relatively few companies in Scotland that are looking for the skill set that we've developed.
