I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

Koch’s line is a comic, self-mythologizing way of describing a formative “second birth”: the moment he felt his real identity began, not at infancy but at an age when he became conscious of himself and the world. By placing that awakening on an MGM studio lot, he invokes Hollywood’s factory of images and narratives—suggesting that his sense of self (and perhaps his public persona) was shaped by spectacle, performance, and the power of storytelling. The exaggeration also signals a politician’s knack for memorable one-liners: it collapses biography into a punchy anecdote about becoming who you are through culture rather than biology.