The most important thing in convoluted families, I learnt as I wrote, is that the child feels loved. I knew from a young age that I was a problem which required constant solving; but I never felt unloved. I was lucky.
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.
When I started listening to Paramore, I was in high school, and they were, like, 15. Seeing somebody at such a young age have that ambition, I thought, holy crap, they were so young. They seemed like cool people, and I really liked the music.
My mother was a full-time mom, and Dad started his own business. He was a mini-American dream story. Came from Russia at age 4, started his own pen business in Brooklyn. The company isn't around now, but he created his own healthy little world, leaving a decent legacy. My dad taught at Cooper Union but was never fully graduated himself.
To be able to go through what I've gone through and still be fortunate before the age of 40 to still be here to be offensive coordinator with Coach Saban at Alabama, you take some time to reflect on that.
I get recognized in the street really frequently, which is really shocking. I'm excruciatingly wary of any female under the age of 19. Even when some of them come up to me, they're usually very cordial, nice and polite.
I have lived in Cornwall from the age of 4, so I have always been aware of the artistic heritage that the county has. I feel very proud to be able to connect to this.
We have started something called the Corporate Services Corps. Now, it was modeled after the Peace Corps from long ago, the 1960s. And the idea was in this modern day and age, how do you get IBM'ers around the world to be global citizens? You know, globally aware, contribute, understand how to work in that environment, but do it on scale.
My parents were educated in the Turkish system and went straight from high school to medical school; my mom, who had skipped a grade, was dissecting corpses at age seventeen. Growing up in America, I think I envied my parents' education. By comparison, everything I did in school seemed so sort of low-stakes and infantilizing.
A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright.
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.
I was very unique as a child, dressed a certain way, acted a certain way, didn't fit in with everybody. So I immediately got picked on, especially around the age of 12 and 13, when you start going to junior high and start mingling with the older kids. To counteract that, strictly for self-defense, I wanted to get bigger.
I've never gone out with a guy who is older than me by more than a couple years. Usually it's my age, a little bit older, or even a little bit younger. But not a 15- or 20-year difference.
I think that, in a digital age, album covers are becoming a lost art.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
I grew up in the suburbs among highly educated people, in a house crammed with books. It was a culture rich in ideas, stimulation, entertainment, and mental activity, all helpful to the nurture of an imaginative child who wanted from an early age to be a writer.
I played street football from the age of seven and later went into the varzea. Sometimes I'd play as many as three or four matches a day: I couldn't get enough of it. It'd get to the point when my muscles would cramp up.
Age, they say, is only important if you're cheese. or a wine. They also say, if you are stuck behind one on a golf course, that a tree is 90 per cent air. How come, then, that you invariably send your ball crashing into the remaining 10 per cent?
As observatory architect, my dad was partly concerned with the maintenance of them all. I used to go with him on site visits quite often, from age 7 or 8. I have memories of crawling through the rafters of the old building, trying to find where the leak in the roof was.