Quotes About Youth

Children are amazing, and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale, and of course I teach at Columbia, NYU, and that's nice and I love students, but the most fun of all are the real little ones, the young ones.

School is very important; it was very important for me. It gave me an enormous amount of confidence, especially at Yale where we were dealing with all the classics. In dealing with the classics, you are dealing with the very best.

I don't think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.

I look at the kids coming out of Yale. They are so intelligent with their careers. I wish I had that.

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

With Yale, my world got so big all of a sudden. At school, if you could dream it, someone would make it so that you could do it. It was magical. I had a lot going on, as you do when you're 17, and didn't necessarily capitalize on all of it, but it made me see possibility in a way that I hadn't before.

I guess I stopped acting when I was 18 and didn't pick it up again until I was 21. That wasn't the plan, though. When I first started at Yale, the plan was to do a movie each summer.

When I was a college student at Yale, I was studying physics and mathematics and was absolutely intent on becoming a theoretical physicist.

Having been kept pretty strict in prep schools, I guess I couldn't cope with all the freedom at Yale. I had a wild, wonderful time, got abysmal grades and was bounced out in my freshman year. I then came back the following fall as a repeating freshman, lasted until April and got bounced out again - for the same reason.

I grew up in Brownsville; most of the kids I grew up with went to jail, not Yale. If they had heard of Yale, they thought it was a lock to pick.

I actually started out as a poet in high school. I published in small literary magazines for probably about ten years. I entered the Yale Younger Poet contest every year, until I was too old to be a younger poet, and I never got more than a form rejection letter from them.

When I decided to go to art school, it wasn't necessarily something I thought I needed. No one talked about graduate school when I was an undergrad. I went on to a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and that transition from Yale to the Studio Museum, that was the real beginning of my professional career.

Before I went to work for 'Playboy,' I planned to apply to Yale to get a public policy master's. I felt drawn to go into politics. Even before that, my dream was to wind up either in the Senate or on the Supreme Court. I had big dreams as a little girl.

I went from Yale to jail, and got a good education in both places.

I have two bikes: a classic 1978 Yamaha SR500 and a more modern Suzuki SV650. I've been into cars and bikes since I was tiny.

When I was young, I had one of those Yamaha drum machines, and I used to practice to that quite a bit, just to practice soloing and being in time and completing all my phrases.

I've always been a daydreamer. When the other kids were playing, I was listening to the roar at Yankee Stadium - I was always attracted to the roar of the crowd.

I remember, my first job when I got my working papers at 13 was as a vendor at Yankee Stadium - the old Yankee Stadium, with very steep stairs in the upper decks. It was all commission-based. And I think a soft drink was 25 cents, and I think you got a 10 percent or 11 percent commission.

I remember the first time I played the triple-A Yankees when I was 20 years old, and Darryl Strawberry was on that team. It was the first time I actually got goose bumps playing against another team.

I was trying to land an 18-year-old strapping first baseman from Blanco, Texas, population 200. His name was Willie Upshaw. It turned out there were only three scouts who knew about Willie - Dave Yocum and I working for the Yankees, and Al LaMacchia from the Atlanta Braves.

I never went through a period were I wanted to be a doctor, a cop or even a rock star. All I wanted to do was play short stop for the Yankees from the time I was about 5. Then I turned 15 and realized how silly that was and just gave up on it.

I was always interested in baseball. In fact, in my younger years, I played it in an amateur way. But up to the time when I became identified with the Yankees, I was a strong National League rooter.

When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.

I love baseball. As a teenager, I was a contrarian and picked the underdog instead of just rooting for the Yankees. It's a hard team to root for, but there's something that always keeps me hopeful.