Quote

My friends and I would get up early and take our horses through the national forest. My mom was very free. It was always 'Out of the house!' There was no watching television on weekends.

When I was 7, I went to school in Switzerland because everyone on my mom's side of the family lives there. Then we were back in Australia, in Queensland. That's where we had the chance to have lots of different animals. I spent a lot of time living in nature and building cubby houses in big old trees by the ocean.

I guess, growing up at Australia Zoo and getting to travel all over the world, I have this great outlook on life, and that's what I hope I inspire other kids to have.

I would go visit my mom on Sundays, and my brother was working on stuff. I'd go in there and sing a little melody, then we started working with words and the next thing you know it was just born organically without really trying.

When I was a kid, I would come home from school, and my mom would buy the industrial-size Famous Amos cookies or Chips Ahoy when I was lucky. And I would sit in front of the TV set with a glass of milk... and I would dump cookies in there, smash them with my spoon, and eat cookies and milk with a spoon watching 'The Dukes of Hazzard.'

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.

As a child, I got bored with my surroundings, so I would be another person for a little while.

I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate.

Since I was a boy, from this house, I was out rescuing crocodiles and snakes. My mum and dad were very passionate about that and, I was lucky enough to go along.

I would leave school every day and walk to my grandparents' house under the El because everyone worked. I was 6 and walking home alone from school. It was a different city and a different time.