I was very immature - who isn't at age 12? Let's be real. Once I kind of figured myself out and grew as a person, I now have a ton of different friends and learned who I was.
From a young age, I was always very transparent, and that's why the kids' mums didn't like me. I would tell you if I didn't like your beans on toast.
I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.
I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.
Here's what it comes down to: I've been making records and touring for over 10 years now. I'm very successful living it, doing it... I'm with an absolutely beautiful wife that's half my age.
I was very excited about the idea that I could be an idealist, that I could be my age, the eager beaver who had hope in the justice system and the one who gets disappointed just like the audience.
'Leave It to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 until 1963, was one of the strangest, sweetest, most distinctive domestic sitcoms of television's celebrated Golden Age.
The early music I heard was Top of the Pops. But in bedrooms, around the house with my brother playing the Sex Pistols, Sham 69 and the Ham and all these groups then going into that sort of mod turnover scene and then going into the New Romantics scene the coming of age myself in the mid-eighties and into the noughties, it was changing.
In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.
The purpose of the mission must be thoroughly understood beforehand, and the men must be inspired with a sense of personal dedication that knows no limitations... In an age of high technology and Jedi Knights, we often overlook the need for personal involvement, but we do so at our own risk.
When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.
One thing I've learned is that preschool teachers really have seen it all - and they can be a wealth of information! If you have any questions about a certain behavioral hurdle with your child or if you have a question about a certain age or phase, ask them!
It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.
I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-interest group. It's part of the cultural dynamic, I guess.
A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
The '80s were about trying to establish myself as an actor with a career. And being a teenager enjoying the fruits of being successful with lots of what I think is appropriate for that age.
I've never been willing to lie about my age. Why on earth would I want to tell people I'm 35, which I'm not, and have them say, 'Oh that's nice,' when I could tell them I'm 47, which I am, and have them look at me and go, 'Whoa!'. I'm not afraid of aging. I stopped being afraid of life a long time ago.
Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.
I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.
