Quotes About Youth

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

As a kid it's adorable to have a gap in your teeth. But then, because of the shifting in my mouth, I started whistling through it, and as a 32-year-old woman, whistling while you speak in sort of annoying.

My first car was a BMW. A white BMW.

That's where the Black Keys and Jack White have succeeded and I've failed: They've actually convinced college kids that they're listening to hip music - but it's just blues twisted a new way - while I'm playing for the college kid's parents.

I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too.

Americans are really obsessed with their teeth being white and straight, aren't they? I saw this little girl the other day with one of those whole head braces. Elastic all the way around! How traumatizing for a child to have to wear one of those! You look like a monster.

The Jam went through a phase of wearing satin jackets. But that was pre-getting signed and making it, when we were still playing the pubs and clubs - around '75. Shocking, really - what would you call them apart from 'horrible?' We'd wear these white zip-up bomber jackets with black kind of loon pants and black and white shoes.

In 'The Sound of Music,' I was a von Trapp daughter in a white dress with a blue satin sash, and my line was, 'I'm Brigitta. I'm 12, and all I want is a good time.' I got a laugh. And I was so delighted, I laughed, too. Sadly, that's a problem I still have - onstage, I laugh hysterically at how funny I am.

Being a straight white guy in his, like, early twenties - there's some sort of thing about it. A sort of privilege, a sort of anger or something. You just say some really stupid things.

Don DeLillo's 'White Noise,' which I read when I was 19. It showed me that a book can be funny as hell and deadly serious.

I'm not one of those acts where it's, like, this mainstream person, where the average white kid at Harvard University is like, 'It's educational tonight. Let's all go out there and spend Dad's money.'

I use to live on this street when I was a kid where there was an old person retirement home, and all of the old people would listen to that band Herman's Hermits, and they would wear white nursing shoes. And they would throw away stacks of VHS tapes, and I would go through the trash and take them.

To me, White Boy Shuffle is sort of like Catcher in the Rye, the story is so universal.

My entertainment was going to the local dollar movie theatre on the weekend, where I watched old black and white movies. If you wanted current movies, you had to drive to the big city.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families - and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

I moved out eventually of the White House and moved into a townhouse with a group of girls while I was in college.

I think, as a lot of kids, I had a dream to play Major League Baseball, but I think I was pretty good about enjoying the moment, enjoying my high school years, enjoying my time in college and not looking too far ahead, and just appreciating where I was at the time.

I have some pretty good memories, but I won the Little League championship when I was a kid.

I grew up loving, like, 'Pretty Woman,' 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' - which is one of my favorites - 'Head Over Heels.'

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

When I tell people I work to stop hazing in high schools I am almost always met with shocked expressions. 'High school? Really? I thought that was something that only arrogant frat guys do in college.' But it's true - as long as I have worked on preventing bullying in high schools, I have worked to prevent hazing.

There's a lot to be said for an American-style liberal-arts education, which prevents young people from professionalizing right away.

I think that in some ways 'Climax' is easier to digest than my other movies because the characters are easier to identify with. You love them because they're young, they're great dancers, they're beautiful, and they are willing to construct something. They're not losers like most of the characters of my previous movies.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.