I'm terrified of being poor, I always have been. It's growing up as a Methodist. I'll spend that bit of extra money to get a better seat on a train sometimes, because it's quieter and calmer, but I refuse to spend money on clothes.
I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt about being just 'regular poor,' not 'poor, poor.'
In our country, being from immigrant parents, growing up black in the South, coming out at 16 years old, being a teen parent... you would assume that my life would amount to nothing. And here I stand today. So, if I can do it... you can, too!
Freudian therapists do a lot of listening and very little persuading, and that was one of the reasons I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up, and you couldn't give homework to clients. While I was still an analyst, I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit psychoanalysis after practicing it for six years.
Growing richer every day, for as rich and poor are relative terms, when the rich are growing poor, it is pretty much the same as if the poor were growing rich. Nobody is poor when the distinction between rich and poor is destroyed.
I would say growing up in Nashville has been a huge influence in my music. Growing up with my dad being a 2-time Grammy-winner, BMI songwriter of the year for five consecutive years in a row, and having the legacy he has is definitely a huge influence, too.
I have to be careful, as I don't want to offend Midlanders, but growing up, it wasn't like growing up in London. Anything you were interested in, you'd be able to find someone also interested in it. In the Midlands, nobody came out as gay at my school at all.
I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf.
Growing up in Charlestown, we didn't have money, but we weren't poor either.
I think that growing up very poor in a very wealthy town gave me a sense of being an outsider, and I hated it when I was growing up.
If the "rich" were swarming into poor neighborhoods and beating the poor until they coughed up the dimes they swallowed for safekeeping, yes, this would be a transfer of income from the poor to the rich. But allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money does not qualify as taking it from the poor - unless you believe that the poor have a moral claim to the money other people earn.
We think we have to prove our allegiance to God by being poor. Many years ago, my own psychic development teacher taught me that to be on a spiritual path meant that you needed to be poor, because that was proving your allegiance to God. So growing up with that kind of teaching from her was a real struggle for me, also.
Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.
Musicals are made of several climaxes that keep growing and growing; when you think it's over, it still continues growing up in plateaus.
Be careful what you wish for - getting to be a successful business and maintaining it is so hard. Anyone can be good one night; being good over several years is incredibly difficult.
While growing up, I saw how finances can play havoc in anybody's life. While we were comfortable, money didn't come easy.