If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same.
A birthday is just another day where you go to work and people give you love. Age is just a state of mind, and you are as old as you think you are. You have to count your blessings and be happy.
You take away all the other luxuries in life, and if you can make someone smile and laugh, you have given the most special gift: happiness.
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.
It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You'll have a nice time, then two years later you'll be like, 'There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?'
For my birthday this year, my girlfriends - who knew I'd just inherited my dad's turntable - gave me a carton of albums like 'Blue Kentucky Girl,' by Emmylou Harris, and 'Off the Wall,' by Michael Jackson. It's all stuff we grew up with. I mean, you can't have a music collection without Prince's 'Purple Rain' - it just can't be done!
I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up 'The Virgin and the Gypsy,' D.H. Lawrence's novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.
In the Mexican culture, we never miss a baptism, a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding shower, a wedding. You must show up. Otherwise, you'll be in big trouble.
Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
It takes a long time to become young.