I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.
I got into James Blake quite early, like when I was early teen, and that was really important for me.
A lot of people glorify and romanticize the idea of being an early bloomer: finding success very early and being a child star. But it can also be quite dangerous.
In my early teens, I was a janitor. In high school, I got up early to deliver to accounts that required early service.
I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.
There were a lot of missteps in the early days, but because we got in early we got to make more mistakes than other people.
I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider, but I discovered theatre very early on, which got me through.
My first ambition was musical theatre, but I realised quite early on that I wouldn't make the grade.
Early on, I got some criticism from other gay writers and queer theorists for being too 'assimilationist,' probably because my characters are outsiders, even in the gay world.
I'm very gay, but I love women. I'm not attracted to men in any way. ... But yes I am gay, I'm so happy. I'm a gay, heterosexual male. ... I got major love for the gay and lesbian community, and I just want to push less separation.
I suggest...that you develop early in life the habit of retiring and arising early. You remember the advice of Ben Franklin: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
I went to Washington to ask for a little residual payment for the people who had written films in the early, early days, people who never got any residuals on tapes or anything at all.
The first time I got into the studio, when I was 17, 18, I got to work with people who were some part of the Cheiron thing, who did all the early Britney Spears stuff, all the early 'NSync stuff.
Early to bed and early to rise, and you'll meet very few of the best people.
Go find very early versions of things: the first TV pilot of a later-successful TV show; early audition tapes by famous actors; early demos by famous musicians. Focus on these early examples, not what they became over the next 20 years. Remember that what you're doing will constantly improve.
I was inadvertently raised in the 'gay community.' I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings.