Early Independence Quotes

Do I have the mental strength? I left home when I was 13 years old.

Coming from a working-class background, where my father did manual labor, was a good grounding; I was obsessed with getting a job or getting out of the house at 15.

I didn't grow up in a regular upbringing. I ended up at my grandmother's house past a certain age, so I took care of things myself. I moved out of home when I was 16.

I couldn't wait to leave school. So I did it as soon as I possibly could at 16. I had no clue what I wanted to do next other than being at school wasn't it and that I was desperate to make my own way as soon as I could.

I genuinely haven't really had a rebellious phase. I think it's just because of the way I was brought up. I think it's because I left home when I was ten years old.

I was in the streets at eight, nine years old.

In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.

Life at home wasn't very good and I had really left by the time I was 16 and didn't go back until after Cambridge when I went to look after my mother when she was dying.

When I was 18, I moved out of home. I decided to try to be an actor, so took myself off to slum it with nine humans and a million mice in a red Leytonstone house.

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

My mum had me brought up by nannies and governesses. I didn't have much to do with my parents until I was 21.

I came from a working class family. We lived in a prefab. We had nothing, but we had everything. I was out of the house at 12 to live with my grandmother, who was on her own, and I was expected to be the man about the house. At 15, I was living in digs in London after signing for Tottenham.

I mean, there's a sense wherein you skip a part of childhood, too, when you start working at that age I did; I was out working and out of home at 15, paying my own way in the world.

I had to move away from home at 14 and live in a club house in Romford for three years, only seeing my mum and dad twice a week.

I didn't realize it. It looks like my career happened overnight, but it didn't. I was basically living on my own from when I was 17 on.

I was born in Bala, North Wales, and was sent to a private tutor. I seem to remember walking to the tutor by myself at the age of four - and sometimes going into a church school on the way and being allowed to stay until someone noticed.

My parents say that even as a very, very little kid, the way that I acted was dramatically different from other little kids.

Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.

I left home when I was 17 with Joe Williams.

I never really wanted to grow up. I grew up really young. I moved out when I was 13 - that's when I started acting.

Even as a kid, I ventured out to ethnic restaurants all the time.

I found the world extraordinarily strange, having first left home at 15.

I spent a lot of my childhood saying goodbye because I went to boarding school. I didn't resent my parents for sending me there so young as I understood the limitations of the education system in Africa, where we lived at the time.

I never wanted to do anything else, really. I left home at an early age trying to find my voice, my niche in music.

I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they're older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.