Kinky Friedman Quotes

It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.

I probably wouldn't be a songwriter if I didn't grow up the way I did. It was difficult and it was at times very scary to grow up in a household so unsettled and at times very violent. But, it also, I guess it earned me a sort of wisdom at a young age that's served me well.

A happy childhood... is the worst possible preparation for life.

When you have a tough childhood, you either cry or make a joke.

When I was growing up as a kid, it was always, 'Oh, you're being bullied. Well, toughen up. Get some tough skin and deal with it.' That's how we were told to deal with it, and it's not that simple.

Sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.

I think there is pressure on people to turn every negative into a positive, but we should be allowed to say, 'I went through something really strange and awful and it has altered me forever.'

While books provided me with some escape from the mental and physical horrors of my early life, they were unreliable. Many times the protagonists suffered terribly and then died at the end.

As you get older, challenges arise that you aren't prepared for, but what got me through it was music.

I've been lucky enough - well, maybe unlucky enough - to have had a lot of friends who have had their ups and downs. And for an actor, that's good. Life experience in any regard is good. So I've seen a lot and I've had my own experiences.

I find titles the hardest thing. I was worried that 'Waste Land' was too much of a downer. For me, 'The Crash Reel' confronts what the film is about: it's not just about the reality of a crash, it's about the extremity we all face, and what happens when life crashes on you.

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

Everybody is not completely traumatised by their life.

I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.

Maybe I didn't have the childhood people think you should have, but I still went through the ages; I was still a child.

I've overcome neglect and deprivation, abandonment and abuse.

No day-to-day mishaps or indignities can really compromise your sense of self after you've survived a deep tragedy.

People think my life has been tough, but I think has been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realise it's not what happens, but how you deal with it.

Young people can get very discouraged and get hooked on drugs or on alcohol because of problems they perceive as insurmountable. It is important that they realize a mistake need not ruin their future, but they must also know that not everything in life is a bed of roses.

My entire youth was spent with an incredibly ill parent... I don't think you can grow up that way and not be marked by that experience.

In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make sense of all the difficult and traumatic things that were to come.

My childhood gave me resilience - and there's little that can surprise me in life.

Childhood bullying was a big part of my life.

I can't believe I survived, not only my life, but I am still playing football 'cause half of those eight or nine years I don't even remember.

I think that when something happens when you're growing up, like a death or divorce, it does open the world slightly because things aren't as straightforward.