When I was growing up in Chicago, my family and I used to go to a local chain, Hackney's, for burgers and their French fried onion loaf. I probably haven't been to one in 25 years, and yet, I once saw Donald Trump from behind in an office building and the first thing that flashed in my mind was his hair looked like that onion loaf.
‐‐ Jami Attenberg
When I was growing up in comedy, there were maybe 10 comics in the whole country. Everyone had a day job. You worked free for years in little clubs, then you got your big break and became a star.
‐‐ Elayne Boosler
When I was growing up in East Germay, everyone said there was no God. So I started looking for it myself.
‐‐ Nina Hagen
When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
‐‐ Zaha Hadid
When I was growing up in Israel, Cantorial music was something I heard over and over on the radio, so it wasn't at all strange to me. I was very familiar with the music.
‐‐ Itzhak Perlman
When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band.
‐‐ Flea
When I was growing up in L.A. in the late '70s and early '80s, Michael Jackson's was the first face on TV that looked like mine.
‐‐ Shawn Amos
When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food... but I also grew up with a Greek family; when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking.
‐‐ Cat Cora
When I was growing up in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, I sold doughnuts, popcorn and Kool Aid every day after school so that my family had some money and I could pay my school fees. It was a tough life.
‐‐ George Weah
When I was growing up in New Jersey, my mom would regularly take my sister and I into the city to see shows. I have many fond memories of standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square and going to matinees.
‐‐ Trey Anastasio
When I was growing up in New York City, my father was a taxi driver for a time.
‐‐ Diane Lane
When I was growing up in Nigeria - and I shouldn't say Nigeria, because that's too general, but in Afikpo, the Igbo part of the country where I'm from - there were always rites of passage for young men. Men were taught to be men in the ways in which we are not women; that's essentially what it is.
‐‐ Chris Abani
When I was growing up in north-west London, our milkman's cart was pulled by a horse, and cattle still grazed on the meadows near Church Farm.
‐‐ Clive Sinclair
When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, auditioning for Broadway was my dream.
‐‐ Taylor Swift
When I was growing up in South Korea in the '70s and early '80s, the country was too poor to buy original records. Everything was bootlegged.
‐‐ Ha-Joon Chang
When I was growing up in Terrell, Texas, I felt that it was not where I was supposed to be. I knew that I was meant for a different destination. I think that the minute I was born, there was something inside telling me where I would go, it's like energy - an intangible destiny.
‐‐ Jamie Foxx
When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.
‐‐ Judy Blume
When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.
‐‐ Alison Bechdel
When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever.
‐‐ Joe Dante
When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, by the time you were 16, you were kind of expected to be an adult. By the time we were 16 and able to drive, certainly by 17 or 18 and into college, you just had very little interaction with your parents.
‐‐ Joe Meno
When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that was so special.
‐‐ Dave Gahan
When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.
‐‐ Michael Morpurgo
When I was growing up in the Philippines, the story that was read to me most was Pinocchio.
‐‐ Reggie Lee
When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.
‐‐ Aravind Adiga
When I was growing up in the theater there were all these amazing girls telling me about the guy who broke their heart. And I was always wishing that it was me.
‐‐ Diego Luna
When I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1970s, 35-40% of an average nightly newscast focused on international stories.
‐‐ Ethan Zuckerman
When I was growing up in the United States and Sweden, I never thought about becoming a politician.
‐‐ George Papandreou
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
‐‐ Drew Gilpin Faust
When I was growing up, it was Clint Eastwood, it was Harrison Ford and Steve McQueen - these guys were tough. They were leading men, but they were also tough and physical.
‐‐ Joe Manganiello
When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.
‐‐ Cindy Sheehan
When I was growing up, it was so embarrassing to be from Jersey.
‐‐ Tate Donovan
When I was growing up, it was the guys who were hardest at school who got the prettiest girls. It's a status thing.
‐‐ Martin Compston
When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.
‐‐ Geoffrey Canada
When I was growing up, kids would go outside and play all day and invent things. And my brothers and I pretended our picnic table was a ship one summer. Our bikes were horses, and our trees were forts. We turned everything in the world into make-believe.
‐‐ Mary Pope Osborne
When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands.
‐‐ Kellin Quinn
When I was growing up, Mandela's name was synonymous with terror. We were scared of him. You couldn't see any photos of him. A photo of him could have gotten you in jail.
‐‐ Kenneth Bonert
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.
‐‐ Lionel Richie
When I was growing up, my dad and I would go hunting and camping every weekend. Like everyone in my family, he is an amazing cook, and I've tried to learn a lot from all of them.
‐‐ Zac Brown
When I was growing up, my dad didn't have weights, so he made himself a weight bench. Instead of a hand-me-down jacket, it was a hand-me-down weight bench.
‐‐ Jason Statham
When I was growing up, my family was serious about manners. I always wanted to put my elbow on the table to prop my head up. I didn't understand how other people looked awake. My head felt so heavy after the whole day.
‐‐ Margherita Missoni
When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.
‐‐ Mr. T
When I was growing up, my favorite movie was 'Somewhere in Time' with Christopher Reeve, which is a hugely romantic, sappy movie. I couldn't understand it when the guy didn't get the girl or the girl didn't get the guy in love stories. I was definitely a sap.
‐‐ Scott Michael Foster
When I was growing up my favorite show was 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', and I loved all the stuff that Norman Lear did.
‐‐ Ryan Murphy
When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener.
‐‐ Jeff Kinney
When I was growing up, my idea of a writer was someone like Sven Hassel, that mysterious Danish author who wrote thrillers about men clambering over walls and getting tangled in barbed wire.
‐‐ Andrew O'Hagan
When I was growing up, my mother always wore Chanel.
‐‐ Alice Dellal
When I was growing up, my mother only put her foot down once: She said, 'You are going to college.' And that was a lifesaving moment. But she never talked to me about my clothes or hair. So I learned how to parent my kids through her.
‐‐ Jada Pinkett Smith
When I was growing up, my mother taught me and my sisters to celebrate each other - there was no room in our household for negativity. She taught us to embrace each other, and this was empowering for us. She also taught us the value of celebrating our differences.
‐‐ Alek Wek
When I was growing up, my mother was always a friend to my siblings and me (in addition to being all the other things a mom is), and I was always grateful for that because I knew she was someone I could talk to and joke with, and argue with and that nothing would ever harm that friendship.
‐‐ Marlo Thomas
When I was growing up, my mother, who had been through a lot of terrible things in life, taught me that when life is tough your instinct is to close your heart. But if you can accept what happened and reach out to someone, there will always be someone less fortunate, or someone that can bring a solution and help your life.
‐‐ Jane Seymour
When I was growing up, my mother worked, and in the evenings, the whole family would sit around the dinner table and recount the day.
‐‐ Isabel Gillies
When I was growing up, my mother would always say, 'It will go on your permanent record.' There was no 'permanent record.' If there were a 'permanent record,' I'd never be able to be a lawyer. I was such a bum in elementary school and high school... There is a permanent record today, and it's called the Internet.
‐‐ Alan Dershowitz
When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.
‐‐ Tom Hooper
When I was growing up, my mother would take me to plays and museums, and we'd talk about life. Those times helped shape who I became.
‐‐ Jill Scott
When I was growing up, my parents always told me that I had to do what I thought was right and not listen to other people. That was hard for me.
‐‐ Hillary Clinton
When I was growing up, my parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.'
‐‐ Thomas Friedman
When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.
‐‐ Bill Gates
When I was growing up, my stepmother's sister was the chief detective in one of the adjoining towns, so she piqued my interest in crime.
‐‐ Karin Slaughter
When I was growing up, my white friends would call me: 'Hey, Chief!' Even when I go to work now, people call me 'Chief.'
‐‐ Adam Beach