“That year I went to Miss America, that was the first year I had compet...” — Shannon Bream Quote

That year I went to Miss America, that was the first year I had competed in an adult pageant, if you could call it that. So it was zero to 60.

I grew up in a very strict household, where secular music was forbidden.

You don't even have to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court, which I think is hilarious.

The days of waiting for your morning paper to show up in your driveway and tell you what the main stories are? Those days are over.

It breaks my heart when I see young women swept up in today's celebrity culture that encourages them to give themselves away for the sake of a few likes on social media.

I was, like, forty at birth. When I wasn't even a year old, I spoke, I was potty trained, I walked and talked. That was it. Then I started school and drove everybody crazy because they realized I had popped out as an adult. I had adult questions and wanted adult answers.

Any child actor will tell you that you don't have a lot of the tools or the experience to combat a lot of the criticism or very adult situations being thrown at you.

Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it's shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear response is automatic, though, and your body runs through its reflexes whether you want it to or not.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.