Growing up, around the dinner table my father and I didn’t talk sports. We talked business.
Growing up, I wish I hadn’t tried so hard to fit in. I’d tell myself to just embrace what you were born with because it’s beautiful and you were made like that for a reason. It’s tough being a girl. I think we need all of the support we can get.
Every generation has had some sort of focus for their unrest and discomfort with growing up. But today, the music that’s in the charts is probably liked by their parents as well, and I think it’s a part of youth that you need something that isn’t liked or understood by the older generation.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of American singer/songwriters, so a lot of Tom Waits, Paul Simon – also Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And bands like Vampire Weekend.
I feel like, growing up, I haven’t had a lot of room for error – I don’t have room to make mistakes. You need to make mistakes to grow and learn, but I’m just a little different because the world is watching me, every single thing I do.
Growing up in Highbridge was real. Me and all my friends, we never really went to any other places in the Bronx but Highbridge. We always just stayed in Highbridge. It was like territory, to be honest, because Highbridge is like a town.
There’s nothing set in stone – some people perceive it as Will could be gay, asexual or whatever. Or, like how I see it, he was stuck in the Upside Down, and he was away for so long that all of his friends started growing up while he was in this other world.
When I was growing up, I always knew that if I ever got anything, I was going to give back as much as I can. I learned that all you have to be willing to do is give your time.
I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.
Growing up, all I did was work and vacation, but I loved it, no one pushed me into anything. The thing was I developed no special skills. I don’t have any resentment because I am a performer and I’ve always felt that, but it did take its toll socially.
Growing up, I was vaguely aware of things that went on in church, because I was in the boys’ choir at the local Episcopal church. But I got the clear message that I was supposed to learn music there, and not pay too much attention to the rest of it, and I followed those instructions very carefully.
I always wanted to do something I knew I could love to wake up and do every day, and rap was just second nature to me, growing up in Harlem. I never really had to try.
I was a skinny guy growing up, and I still feel like that same skinny kid.
Growing up, my mom had a catering business. I used to help her pretty early on and loved doing it. My mom is an amazing cook, and she helped me cultivate a love for food. She taught me that food can be beautiful. We eat not just for survival, but we survive to eat. It’s part of who I am.
I knew medicine only by its absence – specifically, the absence of a father growing up: one who went to work before dawn and returned in the dark to a plate of reheated dinner.
Growing up, dad coached my footy and cricket teams, but that’s all he could do for me.
I had a bad background just growing up as a child.
Being Irish was a big thing for me, particularly growing up in Chicago.
The most important thing that I learned in growing up is that forgiveness is something that, when you do it, you free yourself to move on.
Soccer and cricket were my main sports growing up. I had trials as a soccer player with a few clubs interested, Crystal Palace being one, but it was cricket which became my chosen profession.
Growing up, I like to say I was a tomboy because it was partially maybe because I had brothers and stuff, but also it was hard for me, being a bigger girl, to find cute clothing like everyone else.
I wasn’t attractive when I was growing up, and I don’t think I am now.
Growing up, I never had a role model to show me that you can be trans and live a happy life. I hope that I can be that source of hope for someone out there who’s struggling.
My mother wouldn’t allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was ‘Yo’ and ‘That’s the joint’ and ‘Yo, what’s up?’ So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.
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.
You know that I am living proof that the American Dream is real. Growing up, our congressman cut through government bureaucratic red tape to help my mom buy our first house. That’s the kind of congressman I’ll be.
When I was growing up I always wanted to be a waitress. My sister opened a restaurant in Mississippi, and I went down there and was a waitress for a few days. Let me tell you, I got it out of my system.
You have to remember that when I met Elvis, you know, it wasn’t the fanfare that it is today or even when he was here in the states and I was in Germany growing up.
The idea of the beauty of diversity came from just growing up where I grew up. Los Angeles is a very big city – there’s Little Ethiopia, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, there’s African-Americans, Latinos, Europeans.
Having loved the Stones all the time I was growing up, I wasn’t about to see them go and split up. It got very close to it in the 80s, when Mick thought that Keith hated him and vice versa.
As a kid growing up in Latrobe, PA, I could dream about being an Olympian like Jesse Owens or Johnny Weissmuller. I could also dream about being a great golfer like Bobby Jones or Byron Nelson. But the idea of being an Olympic golfer never occurred to me.
Growing up, I was surrounded by many great men in my life. I watched them and learned, taking it in like a sponge.
