“When I was 14, I was crowned False Spring Queen. We had this whole ceremony with my Snow Scout troupe at the top of a mountain. They did a little dance around a pole. It’s where I discovered my love of pole dancing. Then, on the way back down the mountain, we stayed in a cave full of hibernating bea…”— Daniel Handler, Esmé Squalor, Lucy Punch, imdb.com
“Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.”— Phil Knight, addicted2success.com
“I can remember when I was a baby and my mother was there watching the show. I went and bought 100 episodes and watched them. I respect it so much that the sitcom itself and Ed Norton; I'm not playing Ed Norton but my version of it, cause I'm a black man.”— Mike Epps, successories.com
“You might look at me and say, Hey, there's a happy kid; a little hyper, a little rambunctious, but happy all the same. And so there I was, humming along, when suddenly Dorothy would pop up out of the blue, snatch me up, and take me along on one of her lost weekends.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I just clung closer to her and knew the boogeyman couldn't get me, not as long as Mama held me in her arms, not as long as I didn't think about the little girl who had been cut up and stuffed in a trunk -- only a block away from our house -- the one crime that freaked me out when I was still very yo…”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I was as curious as the devil. Couldn't have been older than sixteen months when I started wandering out of the house by myself. I was a handful. Had to be kept on a short leash.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I remember Mama poured me milk and tried to show me how to drink from a cup, but I wouldn't wait. I didn't want to be shown anything. I took the cup and spilled the milk all over me.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Cozie and James also noticed my musical nature when I was still an infant. They said I was fixated on jukeboxes. I'd toddle over and point to one particular song -- "Honky Tonk Train Blues" by Meade Lux Lewis, a hot boogie-woogie instrumental. I'd holler until someone put a nickel in the box and pla…”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Cozie could be cold-blooded. Even though my name, "Jamesetta," was formed from "James" (her husband) and "Cozetta," she didn't want to adopt me. She thought I'd hurt her business.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“It’s funny how when you were a kid, a day could last forever. Then you grow up, and all these years just seemed like a blink.”— Stephen King, amazon.com
“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”— Alain de Botton, twitter.com
“After blearily looking at the internet a little, then peeing and brushing his teeth and washing his face, he lay in darkness on his mattress, finally allowing the simple insistence of the opioid, like an unending chord progression with a consistently unexpected and pleasing manner of postponing reso…”— Tao Lin, amazon.com