In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents.
My parents treat me like I'm 14. They make me clean my room and stuff like that. They're always like "I don't care what MTV says you are.".
Had I been in Toronto, I would certainly have been killed in this attack. In the room where I normally sleep, the flames and the smoke and the soot is such that the gases would have killed me.
My parents paid me small amounts for cleaning my room or cleaning the dishes and stuff, but I never really had a real job before I started on my professional tennis career.
When I was very young, I used to clean up after my parents. If I stay in a hotel, I make the bed and clean the room when I get up, even the bathroom mirror, for which I carry a tiny bottle of ammonia.
My poor mum had a lot of problems with me around that time. I was young but I'd been working for years, so if she asked me to clean my room I'd say, 'You can't tell me what to do after I've worked a 12-hour day.' It gave me a power that no one that age should have.
Trials make more room for consolation. There is nothing that makes a man have a big heart like a great trial. I always find that little, miserable people, whose hearts are about the size of a grain of mustard seed, never have had much to try them. I have found that those people who have no sympathy for their fellows — who never weep for the sorrows of others — very seldom have had any woes of their own. Great hearts can only be made by great troubles.
Having a child as a single mother was a crucible - maybe this is true for all parents. I got rid of so much stuff that didn't really matter in the scheme of things-like throwing stuff out of an airplane that kept me flying too low. What was left was essential, i.e. not a lot of extraneous stuff that had kept me busy and people-pleasing. I just didn't have the luxury of wasting my life force on so much stupidity and distraction. That made me strong.
When I go home, I still have to clean my room; I still have to do the dishes. We have somebody come every now and then to do that stuff, but my mom still makes me clean before she comes.
Both my parents, grandmother and all close relatives who met Diana liked her very much, and my parents and grandmother never objected to our relationship. They were very much happy for us to make a decision ourselves and made it clear they would support it 100 per cent. We both had their blessing.
Parents will often thank me for being a good role model for their kids or tell me, 'You'll never understand how much you mean to my daughter,' so then I feel I don't want to let down the parents, either.
What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room.
My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.
I majored in political science and English, but starting from the age of 17, I've paid for everything that I've had in my life. It was a personal choice. My parents would have helped me in any way whatsoever, but for me, you know what? I can make my own way.
I was young, but to me that was underground music. I had never heard anything like Venom or any of that stuff growing up in Louisville. That was sort of the only weird records I could find. All that stuff would be in the import section. And sometimes there would be some sort of goth type of stuff. But that was the stuff I was attracted to.
I have a really great family, and when I'm not filming, I go home and walk the dogs, take out the garbage, clean my room, all that stuff. My family and my friends keep me in line, and make sure I don't get crazy.