As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember.

I played with two lines of action figures when I was a kid: G.I. Joe and Star Wars.

My dad was never married. He was kind of a rolling stone. But he was never disrespectful. At the same time, even though he had women in his life when I was a kid, there wasn’t any consistency.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

‚Border‘ was the first movie that I watched on the big screen. It always takes me back to my childhood.

When I was an orphan, I was the richest kid at the orphanage because everyone else was complaining about not having anything. But when I discovered that you could get two cents for a Coca-Cola bottle, I would follow people around who were drinking it and ask them if they were almost through with it.

I was born in Earl K. Long Hospital. I was born Feb. 5th, 1986. I have a lot of family members. My grandmother had five girls, and all of them had children. It was always a house full. A lot of cousins. A lot of family members.

For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

When I was five – it’s not even bad – I stole a sweet from the sweet shop.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

I look at other people’s lives, and some people feel like they’re too old to play with toys. But I still go through the toy section at the store, ‚cause there were toys that I wanted when I was little that I couldn’t have. So I still get them.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.

When I was a kid at four years old, that’s when I started amateur wrestling with my dad and family. And when that’s instilled in you, it never goes away.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.

I grew up in the golden age of Flash Gordon and sci-fi.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

I had a rat-tail when I was younger. I had this nice Bobby Brown fade, with a rat-tail that was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

When I was maybe eight or nine years old, I first learned about the climate crisis in school. My teachers taught me about it and we saw films and pictures of plastic in the ocean and extreme weather events. Those pictures were just stuck in my head; I thought, there is no point in anything.

When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?

Even when I was a kid, everything I had was the best.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

No place is better than Akron.

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn’t very good-looking. But in his own way he’d always save the day.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

My father gave me some advice when I was very young – whatever someone tells you in the future, don’t forget Pele is the best.

I raced with my brother from when I started to 2014 when I finished karting.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner. I used honeysuckle for perfume.

All my playmates on the farm were black, and later, when I started school in Plains, it was all white. But I was always eager to get back home to my friends in Archery.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

My first job was singing on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was about 10 years old, and I thought it was big time.

When I was five I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress.

I would like to go back to Wales. I’m obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she’d pay a little toward the purchase.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn’t even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

Devon holds a special place in my heart. As a child, I normally went on holiday to Bantham and have lots of happy memories from my time there. I used to catch sand eels in the early morning and go fishing for bass throughout the day. I remember a gull taking my bait.