All of the drama with my family and me and my mom and the separation between us and all that crazy stuff - I actually wrote about that. I have a song called 'Dear Mom,' and it's about the trials and tribulations with my mom, so I wrote about that and just everything that I've been through.
When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.
I had a bad background just growing up as a child.
It was tough, so hard; it really was horrible when I was growing up. I was called so many names, all sorts.
Anybody who says, 'My childhood was completely happy,' is a person who isn't remembering the truth.
I was a stepchild in two different families. The hardest thing about being a stepchild is you know that in some way everything would be easier if you didn't exist.
I didn't have the easiest time growing up; it's no secret. We were just poor.
I moved out when I was 17 to get away from a pretty tough and difficult family environment.
Childhood - that was not my favorite time in my life.
I've tasted the dirt side. I've tasted being broke. I've been in the dumps, I've lived in motels as a kid. I want a different opportunity for my children. I never want them to see those things.
From age 7 to about 37, I had a normal life and not a very easy one.
I come from a very humble background. My father had to work really hard to become an assistant director. For a large part of his youth, he worked in a mill and took up odd jobs to make ends meet. We lived in a small room and could only afford a meal a day.
I wasn't very good a communicating as a kid. I wasn't very good at speaking my mind, and I went through some challenges as a kid with my family, as we all do.
I do think my old fella wasn't much of a... I don't remember him ever being a 'dad' dad. He was too busy working. It was a hard life, man.
I had a hard time going to school. I probably wasn't the most pleasant young person to be around. I kept a very tight circle of trusted people.
It's a long story, my life, growing up with my dad, my mom when she died, everything. I had bad moments in my life, my dad going to prison, I had nothing, and that's where I got my motivation.
One of my chores was to milk the cows, which meant getting up before dawn and going out to that cold dark barn. I didn't expect to make it all the way to the big leagues; I just had to get way from them damn cows.
When I was younger, my mom and I lived in a car because we didn't have anywhere to go.
Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything.
I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.
Of all my childhood memories, I don't have any good ones.
I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.
We had to make ends meet. My parents were divorced, so my father wasn't really in my life. We grew up like most kids, just wanting things.
My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved.
I remember my time growing up. It was a little bit difficult because the Soviet Union was broken.
