In fact, you couldn’t give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

When they set off for their first day at their new school, I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just 7 and 10 years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those big men with guns.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

I love tango, and I used to dance when I was young.

I loved cowboy movies when I was a kid. When I was five years old, I was already wearing a cowboy hat and suit. When I grew up, I knew John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Kirk Douglas and so on.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

When I was younger, I used to have more flair, I used to do more tricks, the nutmegs, the step-overs.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused – in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened – by the recurrence of Christmas.

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

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

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don’t think I’m camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

I remember the first time I had sex – I kept the receipt.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

But I did ‚Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.‘ They made a cereal out of it, so once you’ve had a cereal, it doesn’t get much more surreal than that. Surreal cereal.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

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.

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

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

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

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

I have this old ’57 Porsche Speedster, and the way the door closes, I’ll just sit there and listen to the sound of the latch going, ‚cluh-CLICK-click.‘ That door! I live for that door. Whatever the opposite of planned obsolescence is, that’s what I’m into.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

I was adored once too.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

The schools ain’t what they used to be and never was.

Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

I just miss – I miss being anonymous.

I never needed much, and I never thought I’d get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

I just want to be just as everyone else. I want to educate myself and be just like a normal teenager.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

We were on for six years. We were in syndication for a while. It had its run. I still see the people from ‚Mr. Belvedere,‘ too. We stay in touch.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.