I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

I was probably tall as a child, but I just stopped growing.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‚feeling‘ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‚how‘ and ‚why‘ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I have worked hard since my childhood and worked as a labourer. I put my mind and heart into it.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

So much of what we do every single day is the result of habits that we have formed over time.

What is common sense isn’t common practice.

When I was a kid, I never thought much about football. I thought about following in my family’s footsteps and going into professional wrestling.

Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I’ll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

When I was little… I didn’t relate to princesses. I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so – she was so elegant.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote.

I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I’m in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

When I was a young kid, I did not even dream about playing for my country. It was such a farfetched thing to play for India.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

My mother did not like children.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while. For some people, anyway.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.

I didn’t have a father figure in the house.

Temptation is just the feeling that you’re the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That’s something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I’m in, the same thing exists! But it’s 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you’re in the limelight, you can get anything you want.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I can’t remember what made my dad take us karting for the first time, I can’t remember really. I was into motorsport by then and I knew everything, and every driver, it was around 2009, 2008. That’s when I first properly knew about Formula One. Those were the days.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.

I’m from the generation that had the boys‘ door and the girls‘ door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.