I started puberty very late. I was nearly sixteen. And for complicated reasons this late arrival of my puberty caused me to stop playing competitive tennis. But before my puberty problem, I had trouble with my lower back and with my left testicle.
In your teens, you get the physical puberty, and between 28 and 32, mental puberty. It does make you feel differently.
But puberty was... well, before puberty, at school, I didn't tell kids I was a transvestite 'cause I thought they might kill me with sticks, you know?
'Sesame Street' was built on the idea that a show that could capture a child's attention could also give the child an education. That idea turned out to be wildly successful.
As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me.
I had been on puberty suppressants and hormone suppressants, so I did not go through male puberty.
Before puberty the child's personality has not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work.
Midlife is a time of explosive change, particularly for women. It's just like experiencing another puberty. The changes that take place in your body are enormous and, like puberty, you have to throw off the past.
Puberty was definitely difficult for me. I remember my friends and I looking forward to puberty because it seemed exciting at first. You read Judy Blume and you think, "This is kind of cool." But when it actually started happening to me, I was terrified.
It's not normal to meet somebody and then they become wildly famous or they become wildly rich or all these things.
The freest child is the child who is most interested in what he is doing, and at whose hand are the materials for his work or play.
I studied voice and piano as a child, although, at least with voice, you start over at puberty, because your voice completely changes.
A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray.
Puberty is such a confusing time. You are still a child, with all that wonderful naivete and innocence, but your body is changing, and you're self-conscious and curious about its impact on others all at the same time.
I don't know what age the people who review my concerts reached puberty, I don't know if people in America reach puberty a lot later than they do in England or something like that, but the majority of those people are in their late teens and early twenties.
Puberty extends into your twenties, for sure, and some people don't get over that until much later in life. I feel like I'm just starting to get over puberty - basically twenty years of insufferable, totally self-obsessed hell.