Tate Donovan Quotes

The landscape you grow up in speaks to you in a way that nowhere else does.

I wouldn't have been able to move to L.A. if I felt I was going to lose my identity as a New Jerseyian. My accent has gotten thicker since I've lived here.

One day, it just dawned on me that I'm from Texas, and that's what I am.

I paid for my name a lot when I was growing up because other kids teased me.

We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.

My birthmark essentially looks like I have a black eye. It isn't that bad, so you can imagine if it has been this big a part of my life, think of what it must be like for children with more serious birthmarks that cover half their face.

For whatever reason, I decided: 'I'm 18, I'm a man, I'm going to grow a moustache' - and it was pathetic for years - it was awful.

It's a complicated relationship with the place one grows up in, particularly if it's Northern Ireland.

I love Brooklyn; it's a part of who you are.

I think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.

I am, and always will be, proud to be a Hackney girl.

There was this darkness about being from New Jersey.

I still think of myself as a Bostonian.

Knowing that more people associate Chicago with street violence than generosity is difficult for me because, despite all my proclamations of being from the Bay Area, I have spent much of my life in Chicago. So I have a deep love and a pretty good understanding of the city.

I loved growing up in Shaker Heights, and I really miss it.

But I had a strong reaction to my first three albums and I struggle with them now, as an adult. It's very much the same as looking at your teenage photos in high school.

Initially, I think I was eager to get off Staten Island and go away for school, that kind of thing. Then what you do maybe 10 years after that, you start maybe appreciating all the great things about the place you grew up. You can go back and enjoy it because you don't have that angst or sense of struggle to get away anymore.

Growing up in Highbridge was real. Me and all my friends, we never really went to any other places in the Bronx but Highbridge. We always just stayed in Highbridge. It was like territory, to be honest, because Highbridge is like a town.

I could be anywhere in the country, and people will ask, 'Are you from Jersey?' I'm proud of that. We're a weird breed.

As a young child, I loved the hugs and kisses, but I also remember getting to the age when they no longer felt OK. My parents would kiss me when they dropped me off at school, which was obviously embarrassing because having loving parents makes you a social pariah.

Everybody deserves a piece of where they live, in some type of fashion. Music is just my way of preserving that.

I'm a little kid from St. Louis, Missouri, on the inside.

No matter where I've been or where I go, a piece of Missouri is always with me because this is where I'm from and where I grew up.

I don't think you can be too ashamed of anything as long as you were being yourself. I think why people feel, um, so entitled over me is that they've watched me grow up. But that's a blessing and a curse.

I just don't identify myself with a place. I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town.