Quotes About Childhood

When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.

I didn't feel a strong bond with the parents who raised me, and I had anything but a happy childhood. My mother was overly sensitive; my father, ascetic. I was neither. I felt as if I were living with complete strangers. I suspect that my parents felt the same way.

I suspect I wasn't loved enough as a child.

I was in preschool and a girl actually kissed me on the cheek. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what it meant, so I instantly grabbed her face and kissed her on the lips. And, then I got suspended.

I got stuck on the Peter Pan ride when I was nine years old with my dad at Disney World. We got stuck on that part of the ride when you're suspended in the pirate ship above the miniature London, and I was fascinated by the why of it all. 'Why is Peter Peter Pan, why is he in Neverland, how did he learn how to fly, etc.?'

'Rainwater' was particularly special because it was a complete departure from the suspense novels. It's set in the Great Depression and based on an incident that occurred when my dad was a boy.

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.

I was a semi-professional gymnast as a child. I did rhythmic gymnastics, but I sustained an injury and strained all the muscles in my spine.

I liked to act in plays when I was a kid, and then in college. But that's the last time I really acted. I always loved it. But my interests were more in looking at the whole, rather than getting completely swallowed up in a single part of the whole.

I grew up in Newport, so I went to Boston growing up. The city holds a lot of special memories of my childhood, like the Swan Boats and Make Way for Ducklings.

I've always been a Marvel fan. As a kid, I would pick up a two-foot stack of comics and read them in the back of my dad's car on long journeys across the States. That's how I used to make friends - I'd meet up with other kids, and we'd swap comics.

In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood.

I got caught stealing when I was a kid from the local bodega right across the street from where we lived. I tried to steal a big bag of Red Hot Dollars. And I swear, I was about 7 years old and the bag was bigger'n me.

I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five.

I swear to God I was freaked out about the Aswang when I was a kid in the Philippines.

The same way I run now, I swear, is the same way I ran when I was 6 years old.

My camping experiences have been miserable. Beginning with my mother sending us off for summer camping with Forest School Camps. I swear the tents were WW1 army surplus.

My mom was really good at swearing growing up.

If your daughter loves tennis, don't send her to dance classes. Let them learn spirituality. Don't shut them up in air-conditioned rooms where they watch TV all day and snack on chips. Let them get out, play in the dirt, sweat it out and come back home.

I was a kid who had asthma and bifocals and wore sweater vests.

I'm an only child. Mostly raised by my father outside of Saratoga, doing martial arts and snowmobiling. I wore sweaters, jeans and sneakers. I was more interested in four-wheeling in the Catskills than doing my hair and makeup at 7 A.M. before school.

I got everything I wanted from my parents: Brooks Brothers sweaters and Spalding saddle shoes.

Sweden will always be my home, since my childhood there was like a fairytale, so I'll always go back to it.

My sister was an actress when I was a kid - she still is a successful stage actress in Sweden.