It's true - my mother kicked me out the house at 14. I had to go live with my sister. I had some problems. I was very rebellious as a kid. I don't even know why or where it came from, but I had a lot of anger. Me and my mom clashed a lot because she didn't tolerate that, as she shouldn't from a 14-year-old.
For 14 years I had that run in Canada as a newscaster. When I decided to quit in 1953 I was making more money than the prime minister. Then I was a freelance actor for six years in Canada, the U.S., and England. Then 'Bonanza' came along and I had another 14 year run.
Country artists, I met a lot of them when I was five, six years old. I had an uncle who was a country and western singer and I met Lefty Frizzell when I was five or six years old in those shows that would come through Toronto from Nashville.
I've been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can't really say where the desire came from; I've always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down!
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 was still in college when 'To Kill a Mockingbird' came out in 1960. I remember it had a kind of an electrifying effect on this country; this was a time when there were a lot of good books coming out.
Even though I've had 20-some country No. 1 records, I still have a hard time convincing a lot of these people in the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music that I love country music.
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.
I was born in Birmingham, and then I moved to Rotterdam when I was about five/six and then came back when I was 14.
I started when I was 14. I figured out that's what I wanted to do when I was 14. Even when I was six, I can remember people telling me, "You're gonna be a comedian," and all this stuff.
When my older and younger brother came to live in this country, they were attacked on numerous occasions and had to defend themselves. This was a country where it was hard to assimilate, it was difficult because a lot of people didn't want you here.
I did 14 movies in six years, I had a cartoon TV show, and I don't want to do that again. I just want to make unique pieces of art. That's why I quit everything when I was 14 and sat around for eight years before I did another movie.
Like the Caribbean Windrush generation, my parents came to this country from the Commonwealth in the 1960s. They, too, came to help rebuild this country and offer all that they had.
I learned more in those six months [ in the White House] than in the prior six years. I don't think that anybody who has had the privilege to serve the country at that level should walk out and behave like a crybaby. And I plan to continue to serve the country in other capacities.
When you can't read or write at 14 or 15, in most cases you're headed for trouble, and trouble was finding me.