I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.
I love religion and have contemplated going back to school to get a world religion degree.
I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.
The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels.
To study consumer behavior is to explore human nature at its most fundamental level using the modern world as its backdrop.
It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.
The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real.
I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.
Most people would accept that people come to London from across the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, and are accepted here irrespective of their origins.
What I have learned is that designers are willing to tell the world that they are here to empower women from all different backgrounds and different walks of life.
I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.
It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.
Young people all over the world are very frustrated. They are very disillusioned. Many of them are turning their backs on religion. They are walking away from the faith of their parents, and most of this is because religion has failed them.
I think these days a lot of the younger generation feels that the world owes them something. But you've got to get off your backside and you've got to do all the crap stuff, too.
My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends.
Backstreet has been around a long time. Normally, groups like us have a shelf life of two to four years. We always wanted to have a long stay in the music world.
I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and none of the other Backstreet Boys live in Georgia. So a lot of times, when people come to my house they're like, 'Hey, is A.J. here?' Or, 'Is Kevin here?' Or, 'Is Nick in the bathroom?' People think we live together and we spend all the time in the world together, but we really don't.
China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.
I don't have to take a trip around the world or be on a yacht in the Mediterranean to have happiness. I can find it in the little things, like looking out into my backyard and seeing deer in the fields.
I unfortunately still crave chicken McNuggets and bacon, which is the meat candy of the world.
