I have never truly applied myself. Lots of things have come too easily to me and at too high a level.
At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet.
I used to call him Pinocchio on the sets. Pinocchio's nose would turn red if he lied. Aamir would turn red-faced if he had to tell a lie.
Energy-saving technologies keep improving faster than they're applied, so efficiency is an ever larger and cheaper resource.
I was brutally bullied in school. I had short hair and buck teeth and kids would call out to me in the most nasty ways possible.
I used to sit in bed at night and flip through design-school catalogs. I found out that Parsons accepted a small number of high school juniors, so I applied my sophomore year and got in.
There are things I'm doing with 'The After' that would've never flown on 'The X-Files' and on network television, so it's more permissive. That's not to say that you want to abuse that. I think that a show like 'The X-Files' actually worked better as a network show with the restraints put on it, the censorship that was applied.
When you are being bullied a long way from home, when you face that challenge, that is where you find out a lot about yourself.
If I have any complaints about my youth... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives.
I developed my armour at prep school. I was the smallest guy in the school. I got bullied a lot. So I developed broad shoulders.
