Although he moved away from the Midwest for good at the age of thirteen, Ray Bradbury is a prairie writer. The prairie is in his voice, and it is his moral compass. It is his years spent in Waukegan, Illinois - later rechristened by Ray as 'Green Town' in many books and stories - that forever shaped him.
I truly believe that we're about to enter a second golden age of design. The first one was in the '50s and '60s, when designers like Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, George Nelson and Dieter Rams were shepherds of the brands they were working with. They had influence over the products and how companies communicated and promoted themselves.
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
I learned how to cook, began reading books on food. I began to understand about nutrition. It never had occurred to me that what you ate could affect how you felt. It could affect your health. It seems obvious now, but at age 23 or 22 or whatever I was, it wasn't obvious at all.
At a young age, I was very aware I was different and not perceived in a good way. For a lot of my adolescence, I struggled with that, trying to identify where I belong and who my real friends are.
I went through a phase when I was 13 where I would only fall in love with people over the age of 19 or 20. I never had a real relationship with any of these people, but it was definitely the guy I wanted to hang out with and wanted to go on trips with. I would be like, 'But, Daddy, he's a musician!'.
From the age of five, I was organizing everybody's everything. If I didn't like the way it looked, I'd rearrange it. From a very early age, I saw life from my point of view.
In an age that is sometimes nowadays frightening or confusing, we feel reassured by the almost parental-like authority of experts who tell us so clearly what it is we can and cannot do.
I actually was rebelling as all young adults tend to do at or around the age of 19, to experiment with their lives and have fun.
At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.
I was kind of forced to rebound at a young age. I was usually at the back in the press of the 2-3 zone, because my brothers were smaller than me. So I usually got most of the rebounds.
I took dance from a very early age, although my first recital, I remember refusing to go onstage. I think I was three. It's funny because that stage was also my high school theater stage.
You have to make the effort with children. You can't have them thinking that I reckon I'm special, otherwise they'll start thinking they're special. I want them to feel normal for as long as possible because God knows they'll reach an age when they'll be told they're not.
In this age when people expect to get their music for free, we have to work out how we can protect the rights of creative artists so they are compensated fairly and that the record business itself remains sound and healthy.
I figured it out at a young age: I could meet as many young people online and try to form my own family or my own record label group.
Comic books and radio were my escape. I even remember 3-D comic books where you put on the red-and-green glasses and Mighty Mouse would punch you in the face. It was the literature of the day for kids my age who were too bored with listening to 'Peter and the Wolf' on the record player.
When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.
Before the Internet, we were in a different sort of dark age. We had to wait to hear news on TV at night or in print the next day. We had to go to record stores to find new music. Cocktail party debates couldn't be settled on the spot.
Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.
