As a kid, I spent every summer bent over a stack of books, obsessively writing detailed reports on each one.
I was a kid who got picked on in school and got beat up by popular, athletic soccer-type people.
My father was my first inspiration. He had an incredible stereo and a turntable, and I was told not to touch it. But I'd go back and touch it anyway. I gained a respect for the turntables when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I came up with a 'cueing system' to work the turntables because they didn't have it at that time.
As a kid growing up St. Louis, Missouri, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. Any time people talked about slavery, it was always something like, 'If I was a slave, I wouldn't have been putting up with that. I would have been out in a heartbeat.' And it's like, sure, it's a very easy thing to say.
If you have a kid who goes to kindergarten and doesn't know what a circle is, doesn't know what red and green are, and doesn't know what right and left are, by the time he learns those things, the rest of the class is far ahead of him.
That experience with 'Rent' went by so fast. I was younger. I didn't even really know what opening night was. And now I'm thinking back on the times I went to Broadway as a kid and the excitement I felt... And I'm realizing that I'm actually a part of that, so I'm learning to take it in, 'cause so often I shrug it away.
As a kid, I pretty much got nothing but scorn, and occasionally active animus, for writing fantasy and squirreling it away in my closet and, later, under the mattress supports in my bed.
I was just another long-haired teenage kid with visions of grandeur, strumming a tennis racket or a broom in front of his bedroom mirror.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida, and I did what most little kids do. I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that, but I always had the sense of being an outsider, and it wasn't until I saw pictures in the magazines that a couple other guys skate, I thought, 'Wow, that's for me,' you know?
Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.
'Transformers' inspired me as a kid.
I still consider it a summer job, though. So, I try to maintain that summer job as long as I can. But it's exciting to be able to have the opportunity to do things I always dreamed of as a kid.
Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life.
I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both. But you have to learn how to get along. I did an awful lot of fighting. I was tough, but I'm also relatively small, so I learned very early on to use my mind.
My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.
My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid followed me everywhere. It was like having a dog on a leash.
When I was a kid, we never heard of smog, ozone depletion, acid rain, green house gasses.
Look, I think if you talk down to a kid or aim specifically at a kid, most kids aren't gonna like it, really, because most kids can feel when you are being patronizing.
I used to spend all my school holidays cycling around, so all this training has made me feel like a kid again.
I think parents today are looking for meaningful things for their kid. It's about feeding them something with meaning.
I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.
It's easy for me to go back to being a kid. You know how kids can be like savages before they get civilized? There's that sadist quality. Y'know, like boys who like to pick apart an insect for the sake of it.
Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
I read Superman comics when I was a kid.
My plane is a Premiere; it has very efficient gas turbine engines. It goes very fast on relatively little fuel. Flying has been my passion since I was a kid.
I don't care how smart a kid you are. The only way you learn what's not right is from experience.
I honestly think that kids should not exercise: they should keep fit through play. The most important age is zero to seven, both for the kid and the parent - for parents, because this is the time when your kid learns how to walk, talk and other behaviour.
When I was a kid I had this funny blonde hair and everyone called me 'Chick' because I looked like Tweety Bird.
I could have been a rich kid who stayed in college and got by on the path of least resistance, but I got much more out of being in the world and pulling my own weight.
I remember tap-dancing and singing in front of the TV when I was a kid, telling my dad to stop watching Ed Sullivan or Milton Berle and watch me.
But for the first time, we haven't made a huge leap forward in sound from our last album. Fans who own Kid A should be able to get their heads around it.
When I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write a kid's book and tell the world what it was like being deaf.
I sign every autograph I can for kids because I remember myself at that age. I think it's ridiculous that some guys won't sign for a kid.
When I was 18, 19, I was presented as the 'aw shucks' Nebraska kid who's coming up with a big serve, and then I flipped out a couple of times, and then I was ueber-brat, when I feel like there's parts of both, but I don't think I am either one, if that makes sense.
I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.
I was that ginger kid who always wanted people to like him. It's hard, and you've got a big chip on your shoulder for a long time.
