Stay in school kids or you'll end up being an umpire.
I always find it kind of more interesting when people ask questions like, "What were you like as a kid?" Or just kind of personal history stuff, like, "What was the lowest point of your life?" Because that would be like, "Huh, well, I'd have to think about that one." And then give an honest answer. I think a lot of people don't want to give honest answers, or they just are in business showbiz mode when they're talking about stuff, so that's probably why a lot of that kind of thing doesn't get asked.
Aside from accidentally by my kids, like wrestling around with my kids, no one has ever punched me in the face.
I try to sit down at night before they go to bed and read the Bible with them and do little devotionals and pray with them. I think if you instill it in them when they are young, they'll remember when they grow up. I raise them in church. When the doors are open, I want to be there. My kids love to go. So does my wife.
As a kid, I loved my Matchbox cars, my Big Wheels, and the race cars on TV. When I laid eyes on my first go-kart when I was just five, it gave my desire for making things with wheels go fast a focus. This combined with the fact that I've been incredibly competitive since a young age made for the proper mix of passion and aggression to become a race car driver.
My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don't know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.
A lot of things I try to instill in my children comes off of what I've learned from my parents. First of all, you have to lead by example. You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them. So I try to be the best example I can be to them.
Kids with Down syndrome are, by and large, quite affectionate and relatively guileless, and frequently, the attachments to them grow and deepen. And the meaning that parents find in it grows and deepens.
Probably the single-most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids...we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation.
I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.
Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew, a troubled kid, who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than, ahem, Charles Manson!
Well I’ve been doing it for about twenty years, I did films when I was a little kid, when I was about six or seven, I was in films and I had this really high voice, I did a series called Dinobabies, that was my first one. And then after that I did Madeline, yeah so it just kind of happened and then never went away. Then everyone said your voice is going to change and you’ll be out... No, no, still on helium.
The kids didn't call me Amy Schumer; they called me Amy Jewmer. One summer, I'll never forget this, all the kids took turns throwing handfuls of pennies at me. I know, I was like, 'Excuse me - this is awesome!
The broader question if Sarah Palin becomes vice president, will she be shortchanging her kids or will she be shortchanging the country?
Who would know but ten years ago that kids would be texting each other all the time, that that would be one of their main forms of communication.
Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.
I'm very happy that being gay and married and having kids has become such an accepted piece of the fabric of America.
We all know that housing prices are going up, but what most people don't realize is that this has become a family problem. Housing prices are rising twice as fast for families with kids.
When I was super young, I had an Atari and used to play Space Invaders. Then I fell in love with Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog and Yoshi on Super Nintendo. I was quite a bit of a gamer as a kid when I think about it.
Actually, I love mythology. When I was a kid I was obsessed with myth and I wanted to be a mythologist when I grew up. Then I realized I really just like stories.
There's no right way to be female or female-identifying. You can love clothes or you cannot love clothes. You can be a stay-at-home mom or you can have a career. You can do both. You can choose to have kids you can choose to not have kids.
The understanding that women are not inferior across the world, it's something that you can get from school, not only from the book but also from chatting with other kids. It's a big impact. One of the curious things is that even when - and this we found from studies - the schools are doing pretty badly in terms of their education, about mathematics and literature and language, going to school transformed people because I think the action of schooling, the activity, is very important.
I think there's this great disconnect between youth culture and politics, which is a product of how our capitalist system works. I mean, a lot of the kids I know are really politically involved. They really care about politics. I think we're going to have an incredible impact on how politics end up shaking this country.
I hope one day it's not revolutionary just to be yourself, but I think that the work that's being done around identity and personhood is so important.I feel inspired by people around me who are part of this movement as well: Hari Nef and Rowan Blanchard and Willow Smith and these kids who are really not going to listen to anyone. "I'm just going to say whatever I feel. I'm going to be myself. And if you don't like it, then, you can go screw yourself."
I'm a black male, over 40, with no kids, living in the suburbs - they wanted to put me in a museum. Why did I move to the suburbs? I started watching Desperate Housewives. If comedy didn't work out I can always try gardening.
