My mom was a great tennis player, and I remember being six or seven years old watching Steffi Graf and Monica Seles in Wimbledon in my house. I’ve always been a tennis fan.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

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 little, I used to adore gold. It was something special.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

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 always wanted to do what my brothers were doing. I always wanted to play the games they played and play rough and wear pants and go outside.

I absolutely believed when I was young because the Tooth Fairy was always good to me. The Tooth Fairy generally left me a dollar or two dollars and, as a kid, that was a lot of money.

When I was a little boy in school I had to dress up as a bunny and there’s a picture of me with an annoyed face, and when I saw it, I thought I should name myself ‚Bad Bunny.‘

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

My father had a dairy farm. He employed three black families and one white family, and I used to play with black children.

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

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.

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.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

My mama never wore a pair of pants when I was growing up, and now that’s all she wears. It was so funny for me when I first started seeing Mama wear pants. It was like it wasn’t Mama. Now I’ve bought her many a pantsuit because she just lives in them.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

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.

I didn’t play soccer; I played that other football in grade school through college.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

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.

I love to be alone, and I did as a child as well, especially if I was outside.

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.

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

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands. I had posters on my wall. I had Beatles records.

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

As a child, I was an active Christian. I used to love the school choir and remember the carol service as always such an emotional thing.

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

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.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

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.

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.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

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.

Childhood was very nice. The only thing wrong was that I was so introverted, everything became a big deal… ‚Oh, no, here comes the bus. Where am I gonna sit on the bus?‘

I have never cared especially for outdoor sports and have no desire to excel at tennis, swimming, or golf. I’ll leave those things to the men.

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.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on the outside!

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

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.‘

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 was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

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 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.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

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 was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

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

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

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

I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. 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.

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.

In my day, there were no vet video games.