Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
The fact that the majority wants something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, it's not really a very good idea. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up on the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
When I was 16 years old I tried to kill myself because I felt different and that I didn't belong. Now I'm here, and I want this moment to be for that kid who feels weird or different. Stay weird, stay different.
I didn't learn about depression or anxiety at school. So when I had to go to my parents to say 'I need help, I need to go to therapy,' I felt like this weird, messed up kid. And I wasn't, but I felt that way.
Films were really my church. As a young kid, it was movies and books; it was nothing remarkable, really, just that is where I felt soothed, that is where I felt most myself... safest.
Back in the day as a kid, I was really drawn to the Hulk because it just felt so human and was probably one of the first stories that I felt emotionally invested in and not just thought it was really cool. You really feel for that person and put yourself in that situation.
[As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn't so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian.
As a kid, I just felt like I didn't really have anyone to look up to that I felt like I could really relate to, someone that was out and gay and also competing in sports and finding success.
I had been doing theater since I was a kid, so the stage really felt like home to me. It felt like the place where I trust myself the most in the world and felt the most confident.
I always thought it would be really, really cool to play Edgar Allan Poe, because when I was a kid, he was one of the authors who really blew my mind open to all sorts of weird dark and twisted places.
Growing up in the '80s in central New Jersey as a weird kid with a blue mohawk listening to the Sex Pistols and dressing really funky, I was bullied pretty badly. It was every single day in elementary school and kept going into middle school, too. I felt totally alone, without a single person there for me.
When I was growing up, I didn't feel strong. I felt weak. I felt like a scared little kid. So I naturally turned to books to deal with that feeling, and I really turned to fantasy. That's really what influenced my decision to write a fantasy novel.
I had some pretty weird fan mail growing up, sometimes from prison and wherever else. Nothing too intense. Some superfans that maybe went a little overboard with gifts and whatnot, expecting something other than what it could be with a kid. That's a little weird. But at the same time, it's like, "Hey, I'm getting free video games. I'm not going to return it if you sent it!" Thankfully we never felt unsafe.
I grew up in the home of a pastor, and my earliest memory is that God really had a plan for my life and that I was special - this is really weird - but I felt that.
I was kind of a weird homie; I was a weird kid. Nobody in my family loved books. I'm the only one.
I loved 'The Secret of NIMH.' When that came out, it felt like, 'Wow, this is something really, really new.' It looked like a Disney film, but it felt very cutting edge to me. To a twelve-year-old kid, it seemed very inspiring.