Not knowing my birthday had never seemed strange. I knew I’d been born near the end of September, and each year I picked a day, one that didn’t fall on a Sunday because it’s no fun spending your birthday in church.
You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.
I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.
Every night, I was read to. Every Friday, we were taken to the library. I always received at least one book for my birthday. I have a few of them yet. Early on, I had my own collection of books. I loved to read. Still do.
About 50 percent of the songs on the radio are like, ‘Live like tomorrow doesn’t exist. Like it’s my birthday. Like it’s the last day of my life’… Such a large percentage of pop music is really about party time.
I hate birthdays. I thought that I only hated my own birthday, and then I realized that I hate my children’s birthdays too.
When I did ‘Happy Birthday,’ I wrote the treatment for the video before I wrote the record. And once I wrote the video, I had a clear understanding of what I wanted; I created the soundtrack to that video.
Mum loves me being famous! She is so excited and proud, as she had me so young and couldn’t support me, so I am living her dream, it’s sweeter for both of us. It’s her 40th birthday soon and I’m going to buy her 40 presents.
Did you know you’re supposed to soap and scrub for as long as it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice?
It was my 16th birthday – my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do – write songs and sing them to people.
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.
I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year, but I used the wrong paper. See, the paper I used said ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. I didn’t want to waste it so I just wrote ‘Jesus’ on it.
Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.
Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time – every time I have a birthday.
I’m a big fan of Kurt Cobain. I put a picture of him holding a gun on my Instagram for his birthday. He’s definitely one of my favorite rock artists.
Everybody should plant a tree on any happy occasion or birthday and celebrate.
On my 14th birthday, my grandfather and my grandmother gave me the best birthday present ever: a drafting table that I have worked on ever since.
I hate birthdays. I hate birthday parties. I hate them. I don’t know what it is, anybody’s only got to come wafting near me with a piece of cake with a candle on and I break out in hives.
The first time I performed onstage was at church. Then I formed a rock cover band – Pink Floyd and Joan Jett. We’d play at birthday parties, since it wasn’t exactly church material.
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.
I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.
Even when I was an engineer, I was a comic on my job. At birthday and holiday parties, I was the one scheduling and emceeing. If you work on your gift, and you’re good, it will shine through.
John Candy knew he was going to die. He told me on his 40th birthday. He said, well, Maureen, I’m on borrowed time.
You know, we’d just had a birthday, he was… you know, he still had a future out of him, and all I can is he was just one of the most beautiful people in the world… a very gifted man, and it’s a loss to the world, not just for us.
I had a ‘Cats’ phase, where I did lots of overturned furniture and trash cans. I asked for a fog machine for my birthday.
