I think my parents are the first influence on me music-wise. My dad was into Motown and soul, and my mom was into British '80s pop, like The Trashcan Sinatras. I grew up on that. It was great. They were the first people to really bring music into my life.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

As I grew up, I was interested in other areas, too, especially literature. It became a major love of mine. Later, it became a difficult choice for me as to whether to major in music or literature. It wasn't until my 30s that I began a profession in music.

That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.

What can I say about 'The Lost Boys'? Oh my God: I love it; I hate it; I'm scared of it. I had a massive crush on them all when I was young. And I wanted to be a vampire. It's so stylized; it's the type of film I grew up on. To me, it's always at the top.

I grew up one of six children with working-class parents in the Deep South. My mother was a college librarian, and my father worked in a shipyard. I never saw them balance a checkbook, but they kept a roof over our heads and got all six of us into college.

I don't let people talk bad about Rick Ross around me. Like, you can't do it. He owns - I've heard a legend - 30 Wing Stops in the areas he grew up near. You can never say anything about him. If that represents ten jobs per place, that's 310 jobs provided.

I've always loved dogs and have had one since I was three. We bought her from a kid selling puppies out of a cardboard box on the street where we lived in New York City. Great dog. We named her 'Marcella' after a Raggedy Ann character. She grew up with us.

I started skating at age 2 on roller skates on the South Side of Chicago, where I grew up. By age 4, roller-skating was something I really enjoyed. Everyone around me wanted to do the 'roll bounce' thing, but I was pretty much only interested in going fast.

There is a page in 'Diary of a Worm' in which the worm tells his sister that no matter how much time she spends looking in the mirror, her face will always look just like her rear end. Any girl that grew up with brothers can relate to the merciless teasing.

I grew up in the East Village with a lot of old people in my building, and I'm not sure if they lost their sense of smell over the years, but they always seemed to smell like they poured a bottle of perfume on themselves. I never want to become that person.

I'm good friends with Robbie Williams because we both grew up in Stoke and our dads went to the same pubs. His dad, Pete, is like my second dad, I can talk to him about anything and I see him most weeks. And Rob is brilliant, a really generous, lovely bloke.

When I was a freshman, I was 5 feet 9 and totally skinny as a pole. Knock-knees and bad hair. Then, over that summer, I grew up a little bit. Not that I was some super beauty, but at least I didn't look like I was 10 anymore and had a little self-confidence.

With my skin, I have to avoid direct contact with the sun, so that, combined with my mom being conservative, meant I grew up wearing stockings under shorts and long sleeves under tank tops. It was kind of embedded in me that I was supposed to be covering up.

I got into psychology simply because that's what my sister did, and I grew up in a family that was very, like, 'Follow your sister's footsteps.' I went to the same school she went to, did the same degree she did... really had no interest in it, to be honest.

It's amazing to be able to play the sport that I grew up loving so much and that I have a strong passion for. I'm just having a ball. There's a lot of pressure that comes with being in the spotlight and being a superstar and a role model, but I'm enjoying it.

I like the idea of contained emotion because I grew up most of my life feeling that way. As an adolescent, people would always say I was not expressive, and they always made the mistake of thinking that I didn't feel anything because I didn't react to things.

I grew up in Boston in a very, very, very Marine town. So back in my neighborhood in Boston, a working-class neighborhood, when you got your draft notice, you went down, and you took your draft physical. And then, if you passed it, you joined the Marine Corps.

I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me.

I was so lucky. I grew up with an incredibly strong grandmother, mother and sister. All three, independent, fierce, clever women who were hard workers, had goals and visions for themselves, and were really ambitious. And, they didn't apologize for those goals.

I grew up in a small town in the woods of Estonia, and there was not much else around me besides nature. It was stunning, but I dreamt of meeting eccentric people and going exciting places. Music became my escape. I thought if I got good enough, I could leave.

Growing up, I didn't have many comics, but I grew to love these characters through their film and television universes. I've been geeking out about these superheroes ever since I could tie a towel around my neck like a cape and jump off my grandmother's porch.

Yes, I grew up with guns. For my 16th birthday, in fact, I received a .357 instead of a car. But there was nothing playful about them; they were tools. My parents went through a back-to-the-land phase. Most of our vegetables and fruits came from our own garden.

I grew up in New Hampshire. My closest neighbor was a mile away. The deer and the raccoons were my friends. So I would spend time walking through the woods, looking for the most beautiful tropical thing that can survive the winter in the woods in New Hampshire.

I grew up with the Blind Boys' music. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

I grew up thinking that I would become a fighter pilot and was fascinated by aircrafts as I had grown up around that. But my father encouraged me to not become an Air Force person, given the varied interests I had, be it books, movies, sports or fighter flying.

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.

Some people are born with very little; some are fortunate enough to have it all. When I grew up, we didn't have much. I had to hustle to get what I wanted... but I had that hunger for more. I didn't always make the right choices, but I learned from my mistakes.

I grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. At the time I was growing up with my father - before it was gentrified - it was a very rough neighborhood. He felt that if I got into or started embracing the rap culture, I would be one step closer to being on the streets.

I grew up during the war years in a tiny cottage with no electricity. Water for washing was pumped from a pond. My brother and I had to fetch drinking water from a tap at the end of the lane, and light was from candles, paraffin lamps, and our nightly log fire.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

I have to struggle to change people's perceptions of me. I grew very frustrated with the perception that I'm this shy, retiring, inhibited aristocratic creature when I'm absolutely not like that at all. I think I'm much more outgoing and exuberant than my image.

My mum was very supportive, and I don't really understand why when I think of her humble beginnings. She grew up in one room with my grandma, my grand-dad and her siblings and a fire-pit outside to cook on. Now she's a homeowner in Manchester and has a business.

I was born in Mumbai, but I grew up in England, and then my adulthood has been in the States. I'm an American stuffed with an English person with an Indian person inside. I feel like those things kind of inform me in some way, which I think helps me as an actor.

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?

If you had asked me growing up what a stylist does or what a magazine editor does, I would have had no clue - how do you research something like that when you are a first-born child of an immigrant who only grew up knowing doctor, engineer, and lawyer as careers?

In our first decade, I interviewed about five thousand people in pursuit of the talent that would create our future. As our success grew, we became known across the four corners of finance not just for our outstanding returns, but also for our outstanding people.

My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.

I believe family first. Blood is thicker than water. I grew up like that, and I want to continue to keep that goal in my heart. Just family first! Just honesty, integrity, and respect. All of that. I live by the code of those things. If you do that you'll be fine.

My mom is from Venezuela, and my dad is German and Japanese, and we lived in Brazil when I was a kid for a couple of years, and then I grew up on Long Island. I think all the traveling and all the nationalities put that stuff in my head. I was just around it a lot.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I'm the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.

I know coal is dirty, but that's all we got. So as much as I'd love to have clean energy - solar panels everywhere - right now, all we have is coal. The people I love, and the people that I grew up with, that's their livelihood, and I don't want to see them starve.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.

I don't believe in the so-called Latino explosion when it comes to movies. Jennifer Lopez doesn't have an accent. She grew up in New York speaking English, not Spanish. Her success is very important because she represents a different culture, but it doesn't help me.

I have a lot of family in South Africa, but I grew up in California. I feel like my name keeps me connected to a long line of people that have been through a heck of a lot. It reminds me to stay grateful, and it reminds me to try and step my game up if I'm slacking.

I grew up thinking that renting is perfectly normal. And then, strangely enough, I never did buy a house. I live in New York City, and I'm still renting. My own personal narrative shows that it is possible to live a respectable life without ever having owned a home.

I grew up on the west side of Detroit - 6 mile and Wyoming - so I was really in the 'hood. And I would go to school at Detroit Waldorf, and that was not the 'hood. Growing up in Detroit was good. I had a good perspective, a well-rounded one, and not being one-sided.

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!

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