Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.
I've noticed that since I've been pregnant I see babies everywhere. I love talking to them. I never used to really like kids that much. I guess it comes out of you naturally.
Kids certainly need a lot of love so they know you're behind them whatever they do, well, more or less.
I just don't think that a lot of the time the messages we send kids prepare them for real life.
I don't want everyone to think of me as just 'that kid who called Jesse Jackson a communist in middle school.' That's why I decided to become a famous actress.
I got called and was told, "We'd like you to do The Hobbit", which was my favorite of all of them when I was a kid - "And we want you to play a character that's not in the books", I gulped and hesitated, but then I went, "These guys know this world, and they represent this world so well, that I actually think they've earned the right to have a little play."
I really fell for Marilyn Manson. I thought how awful it was that an artist like him could be blamed for something - someone who brings so much to the world and, if anything, probably comforts kids who are in pain by saying, "You're not alone."
Just look at the messages today's media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it's getting really bad.
I never had a time line for my life. I didn't say I wanted to be married at 28 and have three kids by the time I was 32.
I do want to have a family at some point. I also want to adopt. I don't feel pressure to have kids because I know that there are so many out there.
I have a rule of thumb now and that's that somebody [she dates] has to have been married and they have to have had kids. Everything boils down to perspective. If your potential mate does not have the same perspective that you do then you're going to be lost.... If somebody has never been married, they don't know compromise ... [and] if they don't have children, they don't know the absolute self-sacrifice it takes and what it means to be a parent.
I thought, how would I feel if my son gave one of those [underprivileged] kids chicken pox? For him it's not a terrible thing. We have good insurance and easy access to health care. It's a different situation for another family. I didn't want to make the decision for them.
I just loved comedy as a kid and I think at some point, it just occurred to me that you could try it, and I did.
I mean, like a lot of kids growing up in the early seventies, I was fed Dr. Kissinger with my Fruit Loops. He was the Dr. Ruth of American foreign policy, and the model statesman.
If I can make an impact, I want to help some kids and bridge the gap between soccer and celebrity in America.
I have kids and I want to have a long life and there are certain things that are conducive to that and certain things that aren't. I've opted for the road of happiness and long life.
I meet a lot of young people that want to go into acting because they think of what it will do for them. If that's the case, it can be a very, very painful profession. But if the kids want to do acting because they love it, and they want to give to it, then they can have a great life. It's really about as simple as how you look at it.
There are some advantages to being a writer: you do generally get better as you get older. I think I understand things better. When I was a kid, I was kind of guessing at the emotion. Now I'm interested in writing more difficult books, books that confront the facts of life, of death and dying and failure - the majority of life. You write outwardly imaginative books when you're younger. When you're older you apply imagination to internal experience.
When I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, "What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny?" My mother would say, "Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it."
Everyone in my family can sing - my momma can sing, my cousins. I was in the third grade and I was that kid who was so bad in school because I could sing.
The mall is good for hearing new music because you hear music everywhere. I like to walk around the mall and hear what the kids are listening to, or what's the feel of Middle America, cause that's what the mall is.
I'm not saying to the kids yo drop out of school, education is the most important thing first and foremost. You know, my circumstances were a little different. I needed to work to help out so I couldn't be in school. Not only that, it was getting into trouble and all that s**t. I was getting into trouble more in school than I was out of school, so I had to just go ahead and make that adjustment, so I mean realistically I always tell everybody, in my case I don't got a high school diploma, but I have two Grammys so it kinda worked out best for me.
I am an indie kid. I made no bones about the fact that I fell into DJing electronic music by accident, by a lucky break, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan of that music, I just never envisaged... not through a lack of confidence or belief, I just didn't think that I'd be sharing the bill with people that I was going out to see myself.
I did with my wife a comic book for the Raynham Hall Museum in Long Island. They sell the book every single time a busload of kids comes in.
The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.
