Back then I was called Dumbo because of my ears. I was called Fatty, too. It was hurtful so I became like the class clown. I became the one who was kicked around.
Well, I always try to look at my characters as being better than I am. That's one of the reasons I guess I became an actor - because you get to create a persona that's bigger or better or more interesting than your own.
I felt cheated by the way grown-ups told me that the future of the world was bleak when I became a teenager in the 1970s. The pollution explosion was unstoppable. Global famine was inevitable. I genuinely want the next generation, my own kids, to know that actually it's possible that the future might be better than the past.
Death became a desired option. I hoped I would hit a mine or run into an ambush and just end it all. I think some part of me wanted to join the legions of the dead, whom I had failed.
The first six years of my career, I got more comments on my weight than on my singing. So I think I became so self-conscious that I started working on it harder.
In the fall of 1968, I became attractive to women. One day I was an ignored schlub in the street, then suddenly all these good-looking women were interested in me.
The minute we became a global society, especially now that we're all connected up with the Internet, people wanted to believe in something a little more interesting than their earthbound lives.
When I started windsurfing, it was a hobby, and I enjoyed the lifestyle. Then it became an Olympic dream. Now I've achieved that with a medal. I just feel so lucky.
When I started acting, one of the first things I learned was - especially in Hollywood - was branding. I'm a tall guy. I'm like, 'Yeah, that's probably going to be my foot in the door,' because that's my impression on everybody. I'm an athletic guy, and I think, because I grew up disliking jocks so much, that became, like, the character for me.
I'd quit my job at a production company and was like, 'I'm going to be a writer...' I became a temp, and it was the mid-nineties, when there was the Internet boom, and the normal group of graduates ready to fill in didn't exist.
For the first two weeks of filming, I remember bristling at some of the occurrences on the set, none of which directly involved me. Then I surrendered to the environment, to Michael's method, and became much happier, even though no one knew what to expect.
My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'
My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem; how do you approach the problem?
The day after my high school graduation in 1952, I headed to Alaska. I was 17. I started out greasing equipment, then became a heavy-crane operator. I made and saved good money there for two years.
By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth Day, erstwhile snow job, became an opportunity to denounce capitalist greed.
Father's ideals became part of me and still are today. His reserve, deeply rooted liberal views, his provocative humour, his passion for work and love of risk are also mine.
If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.
To be honest, the biggest reason I write music and became a musician was to create the amount of joy that I felt about music to anyone else. To me, that's a job well done.
Mitt Romney has a history of being a great job creator. Secondly, he was a great governor. He went from billions of dollars in the hole when he became governor to billions of dollars in surplus when he left. And he went from the loss of tens of thousands jobs when he became governor to the creation of 40,000 new jobs when he left office.
Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.
I know that's why I became an actress. In my dream world, I could get mad and scream and yell, and if somebody died, they got up again. In real life, I didn't dare try it.
The recognition of rights for women and minorities became a large part of my understanding of what this country is all about.
At school, nobody thought I was smart and I became smart. Nobody wanted to be my friend and then I had lots of friends.
Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family.
Initially, when I first became a Christian and got into ministry, my thought was that God existed to make my life better and to take me to Heaven. Now I realize that it is not about me at all. It is all about God and that He did this to display His plan to restore the Earth to the Garden of Eden state.
When I was 18, I suddenly became very, very religious. I became an evangelical Christian; I was celibate for five years.
I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn't talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician.
As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold.
In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity.
When I was three, my parents were told that I would never be able to recover from rheumatoid arthritis. Doctors from the biggest and the best of hospitals had said that the condition would never be cured. But with naturopathy and yoga, I recovered and became a wrestler, and even got the opportunity to represent my country in wrestling.
It was a time after 'Lady Sings the Blues' and 'Mahogany' and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.
It became clear to me that I had to push it toward a more representational way of drawing.
My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.
Law became boring, but like every job I've done, it helped prepare me for a career in music.
Title IX came along and changed a lot of things for the better, but nevertheless, it meant that money became more important.
Andy Chase and I were keyboard players originally, and we became guitarists later. But it's fun for us to focus more on the keyboard stuff sometimes.
