Quotes About Youth

We've set up groups in schools across North America. They apply and receive a curriculum about different issues facing the world - from environment to health to sustainability. Then, the students take actions from fundraisers to awareness raisers, and some of them even go overseas and volunteer.

The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.

To me, one of the best faces America has ever projected is the face of a Peace Corps volunteer. That face symbolizes this country: young, curious, brimming with idealism and hope - and a real, honest compassion.

From the time I was a kid, I was crazy about anything having to do with the West. I'd look at all of these photos of Montana, and they all seemed so magical and majestic. I just wanted to go west, and I finally did it when I was barely 21. I went off to volunteer at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

When I was younger I used to volunteer at the Mother Teresa charities in India.

I had a teacher who loved movies. He had a little theatre called The Flick, and he would let a bunch of us volunteer to work there, and he also let us make little movies in class.

If you asked an 18-year-old what they want to do with their life, and the options are 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he's probably shipping out for 'Transformers.' If you ask a 26-year-old what he wants to do, 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he'd probably pick Lars von Trier. So, my sensibilities are changing as I change.

I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from 'Sound Of Music' when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I've always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn't me, hiding behind a character.

Every generation likes to think that children don't read as much as they used to when they were young! You listen to some adults saying they were going around reading 'Ulysses' when they were seven or eight! I think children are voracious readers if you give them the right books and if you make those books accessible to them.

One of the reasons I love writing for middle graders, besides their voracious appetite for books, is their deep concern for fairness and morality.

I read a great deal as a child. A lot of children go through a phase of reading in a literally voracious way. It is their primary imaginative activity. Maybe that's an experience which is not so common any more with the presence of television in every home.

If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote for Barack Obama.

Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena. My father was an admirer of Adlai Stevenson, and he took me to the Stevenson for President headquarters, and he volunteered me. That was my introduction to electoral politics, which was exciting and fun and thrilling and very theatrical.

I'm not a huge party girl. When I turned 18, the thing I was most excited about was being able to vote for the first time.

I left home at 18, but I still voted in Kentucky. Every holiday, I came home to Kentucky.

I was voted funniest person in my middle-school yearbook. So I guess I was funny in middle school?

I used to not be confident. My father certainly didn't add to my confidence. When I was 17 or 18, I was voted the most beautiful girl in England by the association of press photographers. When they called Daddy for a comment, he said, 'I'm amazed. She's a nice looking girl, but nothing special.'

I've never been innocent, but I don't think I'm a bad kid! I didn't get voted prom king. I was kind of the dancer, the performer, but I was always very athletic, too.

In 2008, I was one of the young feminist whippersnappers who voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries - or as many of my older counterparts called me at the time, a traitor.

As a young politician, I voted against the return of Sinai and peace with Egypt. I was mistaken.

I am disappointed that Senator Ayotte has voted repeatedly for deep cuts in Pell Grants that would make college more expensive for thousands of New Hampshire students and voted against allowing young people to refinance their student loans.

The first time I ever cast a vote in my 1992 Blessed Sacrament School poll, I voted for Ross Perot because - Ross Perot.

All kids should vote - it gives them the opportunity to whinge afterwards because you can't complain if you haven't voted.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.