When I was a child I thought I saw an angel. It had wings and kinda looked like my sister. I opened the door so some light could come into the room, and it sort of faded away. My mother said it was probably my Guardian Angel.

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 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.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

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.

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

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

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.

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

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

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.

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

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

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.

Not many people know this about me, but I’m a natural blonde. My hair went from light blonde naturally to a darker kind of blonde. My mother dyed my hair dark when I was a child, as I loved the look then. So I’m basically a natural blonde.

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.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

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.

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

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.

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 used to live on one candy bar a day – it cost a nickel. I always remember the candy bar was called Payday. That was my payday. And that candy bar tasted so good, at night I would take one bite, and it was so beautiful.

I came across few whites as a boy at Qunu. The local magistrate, of course, was white, as was the nearest shopkeeper. Occasionally, white travelers or policemen passed through our area. These whites appeared as grand as gods to me, and I was aware that they were to be treated with a mixture of fear and respect.

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.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

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.

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

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.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

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

I used to make little movies when I was younger. I’d make my friends be in them and then edit them.

I’m just a little kid from Akron.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

I was a Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan fan growing up.

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.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone’s inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

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

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.

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.‘

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

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

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.

I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.

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.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

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.

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

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.

In my day, there were no vet video games.

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.

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

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.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

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 think it speaks of all women having those few special things that make them feel feminine. And so when I was a little girl, I would associate Guerlain with that.

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

I was a huge Mike Tyson fan growing up; his fights were always on in my house.

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.