A Quote by Jermaine Jenas

There have always been ­gangland-type areas in Nottingham - but what's really hit me hard is kids as young as eight are now carrying knives to school. That was something I never saw when I was growing up. The police and ­families have got a ­responsibility. These young people are ­feeling trapped. They don't even have somewhere to go to just have fun.
Even when I was young I wanted to be an actress. I knew the actors and the paparazzi. It was just kind of always in my landscape. It was never directed at me, but it was always somewhere so I could see how it operated and I could see it from afar and go 'Wow, that's not really glamorous, it's kind of exhausting not having any privacy.' So it was never something I pursued. The first time I saw the billboard for Pretty Little Liars I almost got into a car accident!
I never really fit in growing up. I got made fun of a lot of the time in high school. People never liked me, and I was always the new kid.
Even very recently, the elders could say: 'You know, I have been young and you never have been old.' But today's young people can reply: 'You never have been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be.' ... the older generation will never see repeated in the lives of young people their own unprecedented experience of sequentially emerging change. This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.
Anyone who's been a teenager, or raised one, knows growing up is hard. Kids can be cruel to their peers, and many young people go through tough times and experience low moments.
I think it is important for young people to see other young people on television doing something positive with their life, making positive changes and growing. I don't think there is enough of that on TV. I mean, we've got 'Jersey Shore,' and I don't know what that teaches young kids.
Starting out so young meant missing out on a lot of things that kids do, that your friends are doing, whether it was playing team sports or school dances with friends. I remember having fights with my mother when I was young about 'Why can't I just go have frozen yogurt with my friends after school and go hit on the girls at the library?'
I did everything young. I was always in a hurry to do everything. I had kids young and I worked young and I didn't have time to go back to school because I wasn't willing to give up anything that I had.
Acting was always something fun to do on the side growing up, but I never really took it seriously. I would do a commercial every few months, and that paid my school tuition. But in high school, I was mostly into sports and didn't go out for stuff during those seasons.
I just thought it would be awesome to become a lawyer, especially being from a neighborhood seeing the police rough up so many people unnecessarily, people who haven't done nothing. Growing up with kids from dysfunctional families and stuff, I just felt that some kind of difference could be done. And now I'm getting to do it with music instead.
Once you realize you can make people laugh, it's a superpower. When you're really young, you don't know how to use that power, so I would just say the meanest things I could to get a laugh. I was so awful. I would make fun of kids who didn't deserve to get made fun of. I was just mean, when I was really young. You don't realize that you don't have to be mean to be funny. But, it was something that I was just able to grow into.
I think that's also why it's so exciting. I really believe this play is important these are issues that people don't talk about. Certainly they never talked about this type of thing at my high school. That's what makes it so hard for kids. But it is something that people do go through.
I've always been a 'your parents have got to come up to the school' type of person. Even now, when I do something wrong - if I say something inappropriate on a live tv show, for example - I half expect to have to deliver a note to Barbara Brand: 'Please come up to Channel 4 head office, Russell's done something despicable.
I've always looked at people like Carine Roitfeld, Donatella Versace, DVF...people who when you walk on a set you feel like they still have so much excitement for what they're doing every day and they just have so much youth even though they've been doing it for so long. Every day just working to keep a young spirit - because even when you're young that's hard to do, because you get so caught up in things. I just think it's so important to make an effort every day to have a young spirit. Then when you get older, you always kind of keep that.
I remember what it felt like when I was young, and I looked up to someone, and they would pay me just an ounce of attention. And some of the bands I listened to when I was young probably never even sold any albums, but it didn't matter to me. If I'd go up and say, 'Great show,' it would be amazing that they even would acknowledge me.
There are a lot of young kids serving in Washington, D.C.: kids that are smart, hard-working, but they've never farmed. They've never run a business. They've never been in the private sector. They went from high school into college and right into Washington, D.C.
Growing up, I played 'Ken Griffey, Jr. Baseball' and just whatever I could get my hands on. When I was really young, I was a big fan of Mario and that type of stuff. I still play videogames now, so it was really cool for me to be able to play as myself on '2K6' or '2K7,' I believe it was, when I was a rookie.
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