From nine on I was forced to camp every summer. Not a volunteer. I played with the wrong kids so they made me go to camp to straighten me out.
I feel education is more important even now for the younger generation than when I was younger. The kids really need to buckle down and get a good education. That's why it's so important to have computer programs and good tutoring programs, so they can have fun in school. It also keeps them out of trouble.
This is something I dreamed about as a little kid, being back in my hometown (Cincinnati) where I watched so many great players.
I always felt sorry for the sidekick as a kid. They never got their due and it left a very bad taste in the mouth - they are defined by a subordinate relationship to someone else. I always felt like a bit of sidekick when I was a kid and it didn't feel fair.
You could fly under the radar a little bit. You could be a weird kid without defaulting to gay, without everyone assuming you must be gay - that was literally the last place many people went.
I used to play trumpet when I was a kid, and then I got braces, and I couldn't really play it anymore, so sometimes I wish I could still play that; I think it's a great instrument, so maybe one of these days I'll pick it back up.
When I was a kid, my parents encouraged me to take many different classes. Piano was one that I really fell in love with.
I've always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.
The Twilight Zone' wasn't around with the kids. They think going up in space is neat. Within their lifetime, there will be paying passengers on the shuttle.
I’m attracted to the idea of drowning. Or rather the idea of jumping off and being enveloped by something, not bad or good, just enveloping. When I was a kid, I had a moment when I got under the water, lying on the pool floor, and felt I could breathe. I’ve been trying to recreate that feeling ever since.
When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose. . . Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult. . . is only a slow sewing it shut.
The thing I see happening is that there's a real compression between generations. There used to be about 20 years difference (in technology use). Now you talk to 15-year-old kids and their 9-year-old brother or sister is using stuff that they don't understand.
I'd come home from school alone with those teenage blues and I'd put on Frank Sinatra's It was a very good year. Here was this mature man singing about the cycle of his life, and as a kid I felt the emotions of it already. It has since been a touchstone for me whenever I want to experiment musically.
Encourage your kids' artistic side. Toughen up everything else.
Always remember your kid's name. Always remember where you put your kid. Don't let your kid drive until their feet can reach the pedals. Use the right size diapers. . . for yourself. And, when in doubt, make funny faces.
My kids really are my center. They create a beautiful chaos. It's always a nice chaos with them.
I’m not raising my kids to survive the world. I’m raising them to change it.
We don't teach kids how to feel, we don't give them the words to go by.
Actually, I was having dinner with Michael [Stipe, of R. E. M. ] when our second album went platinum, which up until that point was the highest success we'd ever had. And he turned to me during dinner and said, 'Welcome to the deep waters, kid. ' I'll never forget that.
I was just a kid, but I was a rotten kid.