I lost my dad way too early and it was agonisingly awful. I missed him so much and I hated knowing that I could never again pick up the phone to tell him about my day.

As a brother and sister our tastes were pretty different growing up. He liked a lot of early hip hop. My dad didn't understand it and would try to talk him out of it.

When I was a kid my step dad started this business and would go out and get lost cows and stuff. He was part-time truck driver farmer and cowboy. He taught me how to ride from an early age.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.

I didn't know my Dad - he moved out early. And my mom's politics were kind of hardscrabble. She didn't think about Democrats or Republicans. She thought about who made sense. I've been both in my life.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s when I was 5 years old my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

Rosa Parks' courage determination and tenacity continue to be an inspiration to all those committed to non-violent protest and change nearly half a century later.

The world will step aside for nearly anyone who has the courage of his of her opinions.

How many women have the courage to start properly with a cold cold bath early in the morning? I jump in throw the water cold as ice and after the first plunge I am happy.

Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings sadness and drama. With just this one agreement you can completely transform your life.

I jumped off a cliff backwards for 'I Am Number Four ' which was pretty cool. I'd never done that before. It took seven takes from different angles and luckily there were no injuries. I came close though. My head nearly hit the rock at one point.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all and that's one of the things I decided very early on is that I can't control the way other people think of me. All I can do especially when it comes to my career is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things.

I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider but I discovered theatre very early on which got me through.

'Sparkle' fell into my lap. I had heard a little bit about it that it was being redone in early 2011. I was just kind of like 'Oh that would be really cool ' and not really thinking too much about it and then it came through my agency. I read it I fell in love with the script and I went in to audition.

In early high school years I was pretty chubby and I spent a lot of time on my computer before it was cool to have a computer - because there was a time that was true. So that's where I developed my personality.

Over the eons I've been a fan of and sucker for each latest automated system to 'simplify' and 'bring order to' my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers and Actioneer for the early Palm.

I work on OpenBSD fulltime as the project leader. I set some directions increase communication between the developers and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.

In my teaching I enjoyed creating models to clearly communicate my thoughts.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later he was succeeding a failed Republican president and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said probably because he himself didn't know.

Today in America we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years.

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat or cure or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?