Growing Up

Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.

I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You've got to harden the metal.

Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.

I used to be addicted to 'Reader's Digest' growing up. I would read the stories about love, and I guess that's where I became a hopeless romantic. I draw from that a lot.

Growing up in the Sacramento Valley in the '70s, we were all pretty big into cars. Of course, I had to nerd out and be a fan of Bob Tullius' Group 44 Jaguars instead of Corvettes/Camaros.

My dad worked for different companies that made whiskey for a long time, so we were definitely whiskey drinkers. Growing up, my friends would get toy cars, and I would get swag from whisky companies.

Growing up in Southern California, it's all car culture. When I was a kid, I knew every single model of every single car dealer; I knew every style of every year.

When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.

When I was growing up, I was lucky to benefit from a first class education.

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

I was a big fan of 'The Smurfs' growing up, even though by default - my mom used to force me to watch because she was a 'Smurfs' fan.

Mom and sister played piano growing up; my grandma still plays piano in church. They always beat me over the head trying to get me to play piano, but I was more interested in riding dirt bikes and playing in the mud.

I loved theater growing up, and my mom always took us to the touring productions that would come through town. We would go to Chicago all the time and see shows. I loved it.

Mom cooked a lot of turkey when I was growing up. Turkey meatloaf, turkey burgers, ground turkey shepherd's pie - my childhood was the Bubba Gump of turkey. You'd think I would be sick of it, but when I find gems like Gwyneth Paltrow's turkey meatball recipe, it's as though the fowl is no longer foul to me.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

I don't know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up.

Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.

At the start of each week, I generally cook a box of quinoa, and while it's simmering, I saute onions, garlic and any veggies I have on hand in a separate pan. I season the vegetables with Spike, a seasoning blend my mom always used when I was growing up, or a little Bragg Liquid Aminos. I always add crushed red pepper and chopped fresh herbs.