I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.
I spent a lot of my childhood sat on a wall thinking, waiting for my mum to pick me up.
My happiest childhood memories are of times in our backyard. My mother had an old clothesline that hung out in front. It seemed like it stretched a mile long, and I loved sitting in the sun while she hung clothes.
The biggest piece is my family... From watching films like The Godfather on our dining room wall, to having a great relationship with my sibling. Or going on weekend trips with our cousins to the beach and eating all day... it's been a crazy childhood; a 'bohemian one'.
I grew up under the spell of London. Illustrator Kerry Lee's evocative 1950 wall map of the city hung above our breakfast table at home in Canada. Over my corn flakes, I traced the capital's high roads and medieval alleys.
You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to travel to the city.
I'm a wall to wall geek. I love sci fi; I've had a crush on Spider-Man since I was five years old, and there's an uncomfortably large shelf in my living room just for my comics.
It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.
A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.
Seeing our kids' beautiful, colorful art hung on the wall brightens my heart and our home.
To sit on the front steps — whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city — and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.
I remember being two, maybe, and hearing my mum's typewriter in the other room and sticking my hands under the door and screaming, 'Mum! Mum!' I was so angry she wouldn't come out. I got used to it quickly.
My mum was the most wonderful cook and our house was always full of delicious food and interesting people. I remember dad entertaining the likes of Des O'Connor and Bruce Forsyth. But what really shaped my childhood were the amazing Jamaican dishes that mum produced so effortlessly.
On the wall of our life together hung a gun waiting to be fired in the final act.
I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor's Palace is the living room. The mayor's office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage.
I had a somewhat frenetic childhood because my mum and dad split up when I was five, and then my mum remarried.