Quotes About Youth

I didnt travel properly until the year before university when I went backpacking around the US, circling around from New York up to Boston, then travelling on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Montreal and going down the west coast of America.

I knew what my father, more than anything else, wanted me to do. Seventeen, vain, and spoiled by poems, I prepared to enter a remote West Point. I would succeed there, it was hoped, as he had.

I was driven when I was younger. Driven at West Point where it was much more competitive in that women were competing with men on many levels, and I was driven in the military and at Harvard, both competitive environments.

At West Point, we first lived in Central Apartments in a third-floor walk-up next to the hospital where my father worked. My two younger brothers and I shared one big bedroom, and my parents had a tiny one.

When I was four, we moved to the house on the west side of Chicago where I grew up. My earliest memories are of that first summer.

I wish all high schools could offer students the outside activities that were available at the old Harrison High on Chicago's West Side in the late '20s. They enabled me to become part of a school newspaper, drama group, football team and student government.

I was born on the west side of Chicago, and there was quite a bit of poverty. My family and I didn't have exactly the best or the most optimal financial situation in my youth, but we turned out well. My mom always made sure that we got a proper education and that we dedicated ourselves to our work.

I was about seven or eight years old when I first heard West Side Story, and it had a huge impact on me. If you look at the elements of that record, it contains many of the things I enjoy doing today.

My first big role was when I was 17 and I got the part playing Maria in 'West Side Story' in my school production.

In 1957, 'West Side Story' had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; 'Bye Bye Birdie,' set in Sweet Apple, Ohio, where the citizens apparently dress mostly in chartreuse, mauve, orange, periwinkle, and turquoise, was a walk on the bright side.

In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow managed to get the role.

The wonderful drama teacher at my high school, Barbara Patterson, saw me standing in the hall and told me I should audition for 'West Side Story.' I guess she thought I looked like a gang member.

Gary Sinise and I go the furthest back of the Steppenwolf people; we were both saved from academic mediocrity as sophomores by being cast in 'West Side Story' by this transformationally beautiful teacher named Barbara Patterson.

I was like, 18 and it was in West Virginia because I was allowed to get into the clubs in West Virginia, not Pennsylvania where I was growing up. And we went in and there was a drag queen on stage and she was huge and beautiful, but she was lip syncing to a song. I was legitimately stunned.

When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary.

We simply must stand with the Boy Scouts and give them the support they need to make a difference in communities across West Virginia.

I grew up here in St. Albert, which is a city just north of Edmonton, and I went to Grade 10 here at Paul Kane High School. But then I went to junior in the WHL, Western Hockey League, at age 16. So I left and went to finish school at Norkam High School in Kamloops for grades 11 and 12.

When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.

I heard opera all day long. From the time I was 9 years old, I was imitating the singers; later I studied opera. But we also got Western television and radio, from the Americans in West Berlin. When I was 11 years old, I turned into a hippie and gave flowers to policemen. And when I was 21 and left Berlin for London, I became a punk.

I just like being on my own on trains, traveling. I spent all my pocket money travelling the London Underground and Southern Railway, what used to be the Western region, and in Europe as much as I could afford it. My parents used to think I was going places, but I wasn't, I was just travelling the trains.

It'd be impossible to capture the feel of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' in a novel starring Mace Windu; 'All Quiet' is a tragic coming-of-age story.

When I was nine, I was singing western swing: Roy Rogers and Patsy Cline. It got me noticed because no one my age was doing it, but it made me feel inferior because none of my friends could relate to it.

At the age of 14, I ran away from home for four days and hitchhiked around western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio.

The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism and sacrifice of our great-grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.