I begged my mom to let me start skating.

I showed my mom the movie then I told her the movie got bought and that it was gonna be shown in theatres and be on video. Everyone was really psyched about it. Everyone in my little town of hounds started to call me movie star.

My mom she's a breast cancer survivor and because of that I had started getting mammograms once a year starting at age 30.

When you're adopted no matter what you've got issues with unconditional love. And you find out you're the product of the worst situation for a young girl to be in and start her life and I'm so grateful that my birth mom made the decision she made. She came from a rough situation.

My mom would give me a piece to play but I wouldn't do any theory because when it came time to do it I would sneak back upstairs and watch TV. So I had these kind of nonchalant lessons for years then it just started soaking in.

I would go visit my mom on Sundays and my brother was working on stuff. I'd go in there and sing a little melody then we started working with words and the next thing you know it was just born organically without really trying.

My mom started smoking when she was 11. She went to the hill next door to try her first cigarette. She set the entire hill on fire but it didn't deter her.

My mom cooked pot roast with noodles and frozen vegetables. Or she'd make spaghetti or hot dogs, or heat up TV dinners. Before I started modeling at age 19, I was 5'8" and weighed 165 pounds.

My mother kept asking me 'When are you going to do a gospel album?' And I've always wanted to do a gospel album. Everybody was going on about it so mom started hounding me more.

My mom had started to go to work when I was nine or ten so I was aware of women trying to find their own identities by working. But I was still influenced by men to such an extreme. I wanted to play their games and wanted to compete in their world and be like them.

From the very start of all of this my mom has read the scripts first. And if she liked something she let me read it. She told our agent what kinds of parts that we would want.

I like to write and draw and paint and my mom's an artist so I think I get caught up in thinking 'I'm afraid it's gonna be bad ' and it's hard for me to start sometimes.

My mom passed away a day before high school started and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy and play drums in a band.

Ever since I was a little kid I've felt comfortable in a suit. It all started when my mom bought me a three-piece Pierre Cardin suit. I wore that thing everywhere. Eventually I realized I was going to be the kid who got beat up in school but I kept wearing it.

Imagine my surprise when after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.

I remember getting this scrapbook that this girl made that I actually gave to my mom to hold onto because she has a 'Twilight' shrine in their house in Florida. It was just this scrapbook of me starting with 'Twilight ' and the whole progression of me and my career throughout that and other stuff that I had done in between.

I didn't understand that I could sing until I was like 11 or 12. My mom heard me singing around the house and she said What are you doing? You really can sing! So then I started going to school and singing to the girls.

I started cooking when I was about 10. I have memories like when I was 6 or 7 with my mom and when I was 12 I started getting real serious about cooking.

Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.

Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women though we do have an advantage: make-up.

Why doesn't Apple stop for a year and make medical devices? When people talk about technology that's where I start to get a little hot under the collar because I know that it's the key to solving some of the world's biggest problems. Having a faster thinner telephone is not one of the world's biggest problems.

The logic is often far-fetched - how does medical marijuana affect interstate commerce? - and some conservatives would like judges to start throwing out federal laws wholesale on commerce clause grounds. The court once again said no thanks.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

It has been suggested at various times that I should start an operation in the United Kingdom but - bearing in mind my age and medical history - I think this would be not a very sensible way to go forward.