I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me.
I had to come out to my mother three times over a twelve-year period, but I first came out to her when I was sixteen. It didn't go over so well, because I grew up in the Pentecostal Church. It was a very strict environment. She has since done a lot of work and has really blown my mind. She has learned about my life and has changed her mind.
Here's the thing. You can't get ten thousand hours of skiing. You spend so much time on the chairlift. My coach did a calculation of how many hours I've been on snow. We'd been overestimating. I think we came up with something like eleven total hours of skiing on snow a year. It's, like, seven minutes a day.
I understand them. I understand where they came from, what their lifestyle was there. But my parents didn't push us to be like them. They said do whatever you think right, but remember the important things in life.
'Dark Gods,' T. E. D. Klein's book of four novellas, felt like a godsend - even if it came from a deformed god, one that lurked beneath our sidewalks.
I'm in a very unique position in that I got to participate in the Food Network by contest. That's long gone, being voted on, but I don't forget where it came from, and I don't forget the people who worked to put me here.
I've always had some level of having to be independent outside of music because the music wasn't a smooth ride. We lost a lot in the mix: Everybody that I came in the music game with - friends I brought in with me - are all doing 10-34 years in jail. That's why if you want to get the real, you gotta get it from me.
When West End Girls came out on import, I was a student at Liverpool University. I'd go to a club in Liverpool and it would come on, and I'd be really embarrassed.
I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.
It's totally different from last year because I came in with good shape with no health worries so it was about going out there and running well and enjoying it.
I haven't seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.
My dreams kind of came through when I went to see the cinema.
I love 'Safe Men.' Now it's getting all this culty kind of - it just came out on DVD. That was awesome. I read that script, I never laughed so hard in my life.
After 'Sports' came out in the fall of 1983, everything changed for me. Four of the album's singles became top-10 hits, and by the end of June in 1984, the album was No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It was quite a ride, and for the first time I had enough money to live the way I wanted.
You promised to take care of me and not to turn your back on me. How is it possible that you never wrote to me even once and you never came back to see me? Do you think that it is fun for me to spend months, even years, without any news, without any hope!
I think racial profiling is wrong. It cannot be defended. It's just flat wrong. And if a matter came before me, and it could be established that the arrest was made strictly on racial profiling, when I was on the bench, it would be gone.
Pam has always been my glamorous big sister - 13 years older than I. She played on the women's circuit for nine years and came home to tell me stories of France, Japan.
My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.
I came in with my idea of what a cowboy would wear, but then I met some real cowboys and they said that I rode the horses well, shoed the horses, but no good cowboy would be wearing a pair of Levi's. I had to get a good old pair of Wranglers.
I began researching natural healing, which is how I came to change my diet. Overnight, I gave up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, anything processed or refined, and meat.
I think some of the best music throughout the actual history of music itself came from cultures where they're not really looking for outside themes. It's developed from their hometowns - it's what they love and what they love to do.
I was fine when it came to cheering up others, not so fine with myself.
On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life.
I first came to Abbey Road Studios in 1994. I scored 'Little Women' there. What I remember most about it was how hard it was to come to London from Los Angeles and conduct when you're jetlagged.
My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.
And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world.
I didn't finish my dress until about three days before my wedding - I had the flu and was stitching it from my bed. And the tulle came back from India all brown. We had to wash it for hours, but that didn't dissuade me from wearing it.
In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning.
There's a lot of people over time who have brought out all these funky records that everybody has started jumping on like a catch phrase... When Planet Rock came out, then you had all of the electro funk records.
Once this old lady saw me in airport and just kept smiling at me, and after much hesitation, she came and asked me, 'Are you Ram? Can I touch your hair? Is it real?' and I happily obliged.
And um, when I came back to England I put a very complex soundtrack on it, featuring everyone from Jimi Hendrix, right through to Neil Diamond, you know, everybody that was kind of popular who was kind of popular at that time.
For 'Regulate,' I was at home, and I came up with it. I was listening to Michael McDonald's 'I Keep Forgettin'.' It was a record that I always loved, from being a kid and my parents playing it when they had their company of friends over. It was a record that just stuck in my head, and it just felt good.
I saw why people died and how they died. I saw gunshot wounds and liver failure. It was a good learning experience, so I came regularly on weekends and holidays.
So many people always try to help me carry my luggage and help me do things I can do myself. If I can do it myself, I'm going to do it myself. I'm not going to let other people do it for me, and I think that's a big part of where I came from. I'm not a real prissy girl.
My first love was singing. It was the first thing that really felt like it was a part of me. It's just in my blood. And acting came sort of out of singing because I did a lot of musical theater.
The best compliment that has ever been given to me was, I was at the airport one day and a guy came in and said, 'Lionel, my wife loves you, the kids love you, my mother-in-law loves you, the family loves you.'
