Quotes About Youth

Music is my soul and I can easily say, it is the secret of my youth.

I know for a fact, obviously, because my kids grew up watching the show, that there are some things they are introduced to from 'The Simpsons', and then later in life they see the thing we're parodying. My kids had not seen 'Casablanca,' and we'd done parodies of 'Casablanca.'

Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.

The early seasons of 'The Simpsons' had a great deal of heart. That's what I'm trying to pull from, the kind of stuff that goes straight to kids' hearts. When they're watching, they don't necessarily know why they love something.

'The Simpsons' was about children and married parents; 'Futurama' is about people in between; they're growing up and haven't settled down. Every other cartoon show seemed to be, you know, dumb dad, bratty kids.

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.

I grew up listening to classic rock - the Kinks, Genesis, The Who, Pink Floyd.

You see people who are 19 or 20 years old and they don't even know who The Who is. It's like, where have you been? Justin Timberlake? C'mon. Where are the roots?

C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?

I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

I think Pearl Jam, greatly inspired by The Who, really did become a sort of musical conscience of a generation. I love such passionate songs as 'Not for You,' 'Wishlist,' and 'Long Road.'

I had always wanted to be an actress. I went to summer theater camp from kindergarten on up until high school, and always had the leads in all the plays - even though they were at the YMCA - but it was something I always wanted to do.

As a kid, I had a background in theater.

I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine.

I wasn't that great in sports. I started doing children's theater and loved it. I thought I had a great thing going with musicals. I thought, 'I can do this. It's fun.' I wanted to go for it, and I thought I'd like to make a living doing this.

I think the moment I discovered I definitely wanted to act was when I saw a play alone by myself when I was fourteen. Maybe it was a Moliere play? I discovered the atmosphere of the theater, and I knew I wanted to be an actor.

I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid, but I started doing theater in high school because it was a requirement. At first, I was completely irritated. But I ended up loving it.

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.

'Peter and the Starcatcher' is the most amazing piece of theater I think I've ever seen. It made we want to be a kid again and made me want to pretend, which I do on a nightly basis.

All I listened to until age 18 growing up was musical theater. I liked the escapism of it.

At some point, when I was 14 or 15, the idea crossed my mind to become an actor... I hadn't been to the theater much... When I grew up, we had one TV channel, which was sufficient.

I announced at the dinner table when I was 11 that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my goal changed to musical theater after the choreographer Robert Joffrey saw me perform while I was on scholarship at the San Francisco Ballet School.

I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children's theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn't fit in.