I had all these sparkles I'd collected and wanted to work in, but when I originally started writing it and it was originally this novel about all these people set in 1666, what I was so interested in was the New Science.
Our father died when we were very young, so our mother raised six kids. We saw the world filtered through her eyes, being a minority woman raising six kids.
Me and my family, we sort of had this plan to... once we had kids, we had a plan that about every six years we'd move to a new country. So, when we had kids, we moved to Bali for six years, then we went to Australia for six years.
I have six kids - four girls and two boys. I'm amazed that growing up in the same house, same parents with the same exposure to the same things that all my six kids can be so different. I see that as their (being) designed by God.
What I wanted was just to make music, and so, originally I just wanted to hide behind the album cover of the last record, and I wanted it to be almost anonymous.
I've always been much more of a guitar picker, but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock & roll guitarist. Originally, TYA wanted to make it without having to compromise to pop. It worked for a while, but after five or six years, the fun went out of it for me; a lot of the music went out of it.
I love kids. I wanted more. I have two, but I would've had six or seven... I would have done that if I could.
Then people ask me if I'm worried about the effects of global warming on my kids. Well, obviously I love my kids and I want them to live to be a 100. So that's another 1.8. My kids' kids? Three point six. I'll just tell them we moved to Phoenix.
My Mom and Dad had six kids, and four of the six were going down the same road I was.
The characters in Six of Crows' aren't kings or queens; they don't have grand destinies. They're just six kids desperate enough to attempt the impossible.
When I was a kid - and I don't know why, it's the most random thing - I wanted to be a speech therapist for little kids. I knew I wanted to do something with kids.
You have kids and everything changes, and I guess before I had my kids I could do what I wanted and go where I wanted.
I've learned to not forecast anything beyond the year, because when I went to Stanford, I originally wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. So it's just hilarious to look back at all of the things I wanted to do.
I just woke up one day when I was six and I wanted to play the violin. Then, six years later, I didn't want to play the violin, but I wanted to sing and play the guitar.
Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. With me, it stuck more than most kids. Ever since I was little, I wanted to do it.
My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor, and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor, but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.