Quotes About Play

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."

He was a precocious and delicate little boy, quivering with the malaise of being unloved. When we played, his child's heart would come into its own, and the troubled world where his vague hungers went unfed and mothers and fathers were dim and far away--too far away to ever reach in and touch the sore place and make it heal--would disappear, along with the world where I was not sufficiently muscled or sufficiently gallant to earn my own regard.

Golf is not just an exercise; it's an adventure, a romance... a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined.

26There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

Advertising is a bit like playing make-believe.

You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.

So, did I work with Warhol? I worked with him less on that play then I did on other things. He actually did a portrait of my rabbit and some other stuff. Warhol was definitely... Warhol.

I have to work really hard, eight shows a week, to get a nice check as an actor. But when I write a play, and it's a - knock wood - hit, the checks come in for many years.

Oh, no, Captain! Keep your distance. You don't play fair." He shook his head suddenly. "No, Kiernan, you're the one who doesn't play fair.

Thoughtfulness is misread as uncertainty; melancholy is misunderstood as a stubborn refusal to play nicely with others.

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. —Mary Poppins

Grass stain?" "Annoying, probably permanent, essentially harmless. Kind of ugly.

Play is also a way to be close and, even more important, a way to reconnect after the closeness has been severed. Chimpanzees like to tickle one another's palms, especially after they have had a fight. Thus, the second purpose of play serves our incredible - almost bottomless - need for attachment and affection and closeness.

Children don't say, "I had a hard day at school today; can I talk to you about it?" They say, "Will you play with me?

Play is fun, but is also meaningful and complex. The more intelligent the animal, the more it plays.

The most common response by parents to children's isolation is aggravation or worry. We may focus on the annoying behavior, not seeing the pain underneath, or we see the pain all too clearly and feel helpless to fix it. These are difficult moments for any parent. What we need are keys to unlock the door to that fortress of isolation and help the child out again into the fields of play. Playful Parenting provides those keys.

If they don't think we will play, they may not even ask. They just go about their business, and we go about ours, and we all miss chance after chance to reconnect.

The fact is, we adults don't have much room in our lives for fun and games. Our days are filled with stress, obligations, and hard work. We may be stiff, tired, and easily bored when we try to get on the floor and play with children—especially when it means switching gears from a stressful day of work or household chores.

Others of us may be unable to put aside our competitiveness or our need to be in control. We get bored, cranky, and frustrated; we're sore losers; we worry about teaching how to throw the ball correctly when our child just wants to play catch.

Getting on the floor also means joining in with play that we would rather ignore or eliminate.

Young children also play to learn about the world. Why aren't we amused when our toddler drops her food off the high chair for the hundredth time? Because we know about gravity (and we have to clean it up). She, however, is extremely amused, because everything about the universe is new and interesting and open to playful discovery.

all play is more profoundly meaningful than we usually think. First, play is a way to try on adult roles and skills, just as lion cubs do when they wrestle with one another. Human children roughhouse, and they play house. As children discover the world, and discover what they are able to do in the world, they develop confidence and mastery.

Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.

Suzanne Collins could have chosen to give us Coin as president, an example of a continuous pattern, mistakes just waiting to be made again. Instead she gives us a song. And children. And though "they play on a graveyard" (Mockingjay), the important thing is that they are free to play.