I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

One of my favorite memories was one time Prince picked me up and said we were going to Michael Jordan's birthday party.

I was hurtling towards 40, and I'd always wanted to write. It does focus your mind, heading towards that big birthday. If there is anything you think you want to do, you think, 'I probably should have a go now!'

For my 16th birthday, my family took me to L'Auberge de L'Ill, which was family-run but had three Michelin stars. It was a revelation. After that meal, I realised this is what I want to do.

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.

As I approach my 88th birthday, it's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be. The prospect of long flights to wherever in search of whatever are not quite as appealing.

I think I've wanted to be an actress since the day I was born. I even asked my parents for an agent for my seventh birthday!

I find the violence in PG13 movies unbearable. This kid will never run home, never have another birthday. His death is slow, nightmarish. And you have to explore the consequences - the people who live on with this death.

My dad bought me a dartboard for my 11th birthday, and I became intrigued by the game.

For a meal out, my number one restaurant is Peter's Inn. I first went there when it was an old biker bar. Believe me, when it was Motorcycle Pete's, that was fun. I had my 30th birthday there.

My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'

When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter's body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.

I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?

Robert Duvall saw me playing at a restaurant in Louisiana and invited me to be an extra in his movie 'The Apostle.' He gave me a guitar for my sixth birthday, and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

It was a big pleasure to play a Grand Slam match on my birthday.

A 1920s dress I wore on my 21st birthday... literally disintegrated on me. I had the most wild debauched night. And that disintegrated dress sits in my closet - such a great memory.

For my 10th birthday, what I wanted was Beatle boots and a Beatle wig. My parents couldn't find Beatle boots, but down at the dime store, Woolworths or someplace, they found a Beatle wig!

I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthday. And in the year that followed, I learned that there are many psychological phases of being 'let go.'

I had a birthday one night on a farm we were shooting on. I walked into the tent, and there were 150 people waiting for me, all wearing masks of my face.

I was fired by 'America's Next Top Model' on my birthday.

'Down on Me' can't showcase my true talent. 'Birthday Sex' was robotic. When I perform it, I can't give you this church feeling I know I can give.

Family time was very difficult when my girls were little, but I never missed a birthday; I was there for every major event.

When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta bechamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce.

When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.

I've never really made a big deal out of my birthday.

I went by Kyle, and I made friends on the team as Kyle. It went on for a pretty long time, until I went to a birthday party in a dress and all the hockey players were like... 'Kyle?'

My parents were dishonest people. If it was my birthday, I knew my mother took me to the K-Mart and she stole my toy. She'd put it in the shopping cart and we'd walk out. I was raised with that.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it.

I was on the train; I did play, but I also played in bars, in the streets, at birthday parties for people who discovered me on the train.

I guess I could say I'm an actor, which I am, but that sounds like I'm putting down being a movie star, which, let's face it, is what I've become to many people. For myself, I'm a guy who was very insecure from about age 14 until the day I hit my 30th birthday.

Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.

When I was young and it was someone's birthday, I didn't have the money to buy nice presents so I would take my mom's camera and make a movie parody for whoever's birthday it was. When I'd show it them, they'd die laughing. That reaction was a high for me, and I loved that feeling.

I quit high school on my birthday. It was my senior year and I didn't see the point. This was 1962, and I was ready to make music.

I don't go into a fight mad. I go into a fight like it's my birthday. I love what I'm doing.

I thought it would be cool to Skype with fans on their birthday and spend, like, a half-hour with them. I did a couple of two-hour Skypes. I just hang out with them and play songs and stuff. At first they're kind of shy, but after a while they open up. I've had a lot of people tell me I'm doing something no one has ever done before.

I always knew that good stuff would come along when I was older. So when I was 18, I longed to be 30; when I was 30, I longed to be 50. I've always looked forward to my next birthday.

I threw my son, Brandon, a rave for his birthday and I fully set it up like a crazy rave with lights and sound, me and my partner DJ'd - I got Mix Master Mike from the Beastie Boys to come DJ for a bit.

Plays have a celebratory nature that no other form has. Theater always meant celebration, a birthday, a reward for good grades. I felt at home in a theater. I loved being part of an audience. All the rules - the audience has to see the play on a certain date at a certain time in a certain place in a certain seat.

Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: 'Really? I do, too.'

I've been singing since I could talk. I started playing the piano when I was about 5 or 6. I picked up the guitar on my 20th birthday.

We were probably the last people in the country to get a VCR and we didn't have cable. There wasn't any admiration of glamour, no, 'I want to look like them or have that lifestyle', because everyone in my town had the same lifestyle. So I didn't think, 'Ooh, a movie star's birthday!' I just thought, 'What?'

Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.

When I was 13 or 14, my mother used to gift me books that I was dying to read. Those are my most memorable birthday gifts.

On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday - I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn't.

Nicole Richie invited me to her birthday party, and it was at Michael Jackson's Neverland!

Having studied at the Sorbonne, I spent my 21st birthday in Paris and celebrated with one of my professors in a cafe outside of Notre Dame.

In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English.