I gave myself permission to feel and experience all of my emotions. In order to do that, I had to stop being afraid to feel. In order to do that, I taught myself to believe that no matter what I felt or what happened when I felt it, I would be okay.

I think education was the key for me, and that's what I tell kids. That base in the classics gave me something to springboard from, which I wouldn't have had if I'd come out to Los Angeles early and been guest punk of the week on 'Hill Street Blues.'

I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.

I know I wouldn't be a New York Yankee if it wasn't for my mom: the guidance she gave me as a kid growing up, knowing the difference from right and wrong, how to treat people and how to go the extra mile and put in extra work, all that kind of stuff.

I gave up tennis to study, but not before it had shown me how to focus and concentrate. It taught me self-discipline: I was playing four or five hours a day and doing five-mile runs. When I stopped, my energy had to be channelled into something else.

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

When the kids were growing up, they learned to be independent. I told them, 'As long as you're doing something good, it's worth pursuing.' That's why I invested in them in the first place and gave them as much as I could for their first company, Zip2.

My mom broke the mold. She put my brother and I first, always, and worked her fingers to the bone trying to provide for us. She taught us right from wrong and gave us very strong morals and values and belief in family, things that have stayed with me.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't bless myself with holy water and then get in my car and rub the medal of the Virgin Mary that she gave me and say a Hail Mary for my mother. And then I kiss her Mass card that's right there on the dashboard.

Hatta always gave the impression of rain. If I was in a real good mood and full of ideas and then happened to encounter Hatta, I felt I was suddenly surprised by a shower of rain and got wet all over the body. My good mood was gone, and also my ideas.

I grew up Catholic. We went to confession on Saturday, stood in the shortest line, since it led to the priest who gave the easiest penance - usually a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. We confessed in private, prayed our penance and our souls were clean.

Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.

Paul Daigneault of The SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston gave me my Equity card playing Marta in 'Company' right before I graduated Boston University. He knew my next stop was New York. I cannot say enough good things about the SpeakEasy Stage Company.

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

Emmitt Till had walked into a cultural narrative in which his role was already tragically written. It was a narrative designed to preserve white supremacy. So it gave power - the right to kill - to any white claiming to defend the honor of white women.

For me, I guess music has always been the through-line. You know, I played guitar from a really young age, and my dad played, and my cousin gave me a drum kit when I was 13, and I played bass guitar, so, you know, it was definitely always in the house.

I went to Catholic school, and there was this teacher, a Brother, who saw I could go either way, good or bad. He took an interest in me and got me to do a play. I got hooked on acting, and it gave me something constructive to do. I had a lot of energy.

In 1989, a lone and still-anonymous Chinese student stood unarmed in front of a Chinese tank and gave the world an enduring image of the determination of China's young to change their nation. He didn't text message the tank or share a video on YouTube.

I played rugby for years, and I had a rugby jacket that I lost when I was 14. Somehow, my brother found it in storage 15 years later, and he gave it back to me for my 30th birthday. That was amazing and probably one of the best gifts I've ever received.

I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.

'Britain's Got Talent' just gave me that platform that I needed to share that with the world and be recognized, and now I'm able to travel the world and sing my music in places I never thought I'd visit - Dubai, Mexico, Brazil, so many different places.

Abdias do Nascimento was the first writer who gave me racial consciousness. It was through his books and writings that I first took in the real weight of race in our society. He was the main influence on me because in my family, race was never an issue.

What is wrong with the Iranians in addition to the nuclear bomb? This is the only country on Earth in the 21st century that has renewed imperialistic ambitions. They really want to become the hegemon of the Middle East in an age that gave up imperialism.

When I was a kid, I collected cactuses. I had hundreds of different kinds in my room. I was a weird child. Everyone was playing football, and I was collecting cactuses. I spent all my money on them. I had so many colors and shapes. I even gave them names.

No one can bully me better than me. I'm the first person to the party going, 'Don't worry - you don't have to cut me down, 'cause I'm already there.' I struggled with all those voices and gave them so much power, to the point where they took over my life.

I didn't have accessories when I started my career. Did you see me wearing bling-bling when I did 'Hola at Your Boi?' No! I hustled to get money to buy them, and there is no crime if I show it or flaunt it to my fans because they gave me money to buy them.

Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.

When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early.

Don't compare me to Babe Ruth. God gave me the opportunity and the ability to be here at the right time, at the right moment, just like he gave Babe Ruth when he was playing. I just hope I can keep doing what I've been doing - keep taking care of business.

The human brain had a vast memory storage. It made us curious and very creative. Those were the characteristics that gave us an advantage - curiosity, creativity and memory. And that brain did something very special. It invented an idea called 'the future.'

When I was eight, an uncle, great uncle, gave a violin to me, and my father took me off to have lessons. After about six weeks, the violin teacher told my father he was wasting his money, wasting his time, and wasting my time, and it's one of my big regrets.

I do remember meeting 'The Donald.' He seemed to really enjoy the WrestleMania 4 battle royal. He watched me take a very hard front turnbuckle bump, and it seemed to stun him that I wasn't seriously hurt. Backstage, Trump gave me a big smile and a handshake.

The main quality I have is my mentality because I never gave up - I never, ever give up. I have been like that since I was young. I knew I had to take my chance when it came. Nobody gives you anything. You have to go and take it and this was the way I think.

Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don't know who my dad is, they think he's my coach.

At my aunt's funeral, I promised myself that I wouldn't be bound by the belief that I'm supposed to stay in anything - whether it's a relationship, a job, a house, or a circumstance - if it makes me miserable. She gave me the courage to find my own happiness.

For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives.

The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires!

A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.

I traded my 2002 Silverado in for the Trailblazer, and after my second fight, I got a win bonus. It was the knockout-of-the-night bonus, $50,000, and I paid the rest of my car off, and I gave it to my mother because I had a sponsorship with a Chevy dealership.

Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself. I don't put it on a platform. I don't campaign about it. It's just something that works for me. It enabled me to really connect with another human being - my wife, Sheryl - which I was never able to do before.

When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery.

The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

When I hit my thirties, that's when I calmed down and I wasn't so tough on myself. I wasn't doing the yo-yo dieting any more. I gave myself a break. I think that, if you're more accepting of yourself, you're more free and open and can just allow more people in.

My first professional acting job was on 'Boss'. My first acting job was basically my first acting class. I had to show up on set prepared and knowing my lines. Also, I got a chance to work with a living legend, Kelsey Grammar - that gave me hands on experience.

I grew up originally in Rochester. It was where I was born and a very tough neighbourhood with a lot of violence. I consider myself lucky. When I was aged 11, in 1998, Dad moved us to a suburban area from what was a ghetto area. It gave me a chance of survival.

Without boxing, because of my neighborhoods, who knows what would have happened to me. It was always about following the leader. And I definitely was not a leader. Boxing gave me discipline; a sense of self. It made me more outspoken. It gave me more confidence.

I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts - protecting them, I thought, from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics, if not in my soul. The true me, my spiritual core, slipped further and further from reach.

I met Ellie Goulding at the BRITs. She's lovely. I've got a lot of time for her. I gave her congratulations and whatnot and she let me hold her BRIT. That was amazing - once I'd touched one for the first time, I said 'This cannot be the last time I touch a BRIT.'

Capricorns like to stay in one place. I have to go to work in places like New York, but basically, I don't want to go anywhere. One time, I got a trip around the world for doing something on television, and the travel agent was so excited, I gave her the tickets.

Share This Page