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I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.


Alain de Botton

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FIDEL CASTRO I was born in September. I hated the name when I was a kid, but I've grown with it. My dad wanted to...
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GUILLERMO DIAZ Even when I was in high school and the Navy, I was the guy who could rip somebody, and they'd la...
DON RICKLES Sport is a very important subject at school, that's why I gave Quidditch such an important place at ...
JOANNE KATHLEEN ROWLING Strangely enough, through all those school years I decided at 13 or 14 I was going to be a musician ...
ALVIN LEE I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school for 12 years.
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DAVID BOREANAZ The environment I was raised in, you had to, to survive.
MARK WAHLBERG I graduated from university with a degree in architecture and then ended up doing a series of intern...
DANIEL WU At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetent...
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CHRISTINA ENGELA I got the name when I was 13, ... I got in a fight with another boy at a Sunday school picnic. Mr. S...
LYNDON JOHNSON I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University o...
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HARUKI MURAKAMI I think I'm one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself - and other ...
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IMTIAZ ALI My favorite was always whichever sport was in season. I think these days it's almost saddening t...
SAM BRADFORD When I was very, very young, seven years old, I heard there was school where you could go to learn t...
DAVID COVERDALE I had started law school at Florida State University as a part-timer. I would go two quarters, and t...
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JULIE BROWN When I was a kid, the idea of gettin' paid to paint your face... listen, I grew up in Ossining, ...
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LINDSAY PEARCE I very much wanted to live in Paris when I was in the army, and I was quite determined to. I could h...
PAUL JOHNSON Even though arguably I could have done much better at school, I'd decided at a young age that I ...
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NAVEEN ANDREWS I had a great time in high school. I really did. I went to a private Christian high school and I gra...
ODETTE ANNABLE

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ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON