Quotes About Childhood

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

Mother had taught me dance steps from the time I was 3, and we were always singing and dancing around the kitchen table.

I started doing radio commercials for Kmart when I was 4. They had to splice all my consonants together because I couldn't talk very well. But these jobs helped my mother and me put food on the table. It took the two of us working.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

My parents never condescended to me. As a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always given a lot of responsibility.

My dad had a habit of giving me the Abdullah the Butcher matches as well as the ones with tables and chairs - basically, the matches that went all over the building.

Like many Asian parents, mine were very focused on education. My dad would quiz me with multiplication tables when I was about 5.

I had a recurring dream when I was younger where red foxes would chase me under tables. It was so weird. And I kept having the same dream.

In places where people read hardcover books and eat sushi, they're not signing a five-year-old up to tackle another five-year-old.

I know it's really hard to be a 350-pound defensive tackle and try not to land on the quarterback, even though you've been doing it since you were 5 years old.

So, growing up myself, I played flag all the way up until seventh grade. So, we didn't tackle until I was 12, 13 years old or whatever it was.

As a kid, when the neighbors were out playing street hockey or tackle football, my friends and I were in my basement with the NES/SNES.

I was playing tackle football in the street at five years old. Always being physical. Always being tough, just like a man's man. It was just always about being tough.

I want children who can make eye contact. I want children who know how to resolve conflicts with their peers. I want children who understand the dynamics of interpersonal relationships that are physical and tactile. I do not want children that only know how to interface with the world through a screen.

My mother and I lived in an apartment complex in a neighborhood. So there was a gaggle of kids. Every day after school, we'd just meet up in a field, and some game would be chosen, Wiffle ball or tag, and you'd play that until the streetlights came on.

There were times I'd be nervous walking home from elementary school, thinking, 'If that red tag from the power company saying our lights are turned off is on the door handle, I don't know what I'll do.'

I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor.

I have been tagged mischievous since childhood and was known as a prankster.

As a child, during the war, I drew Spitfires and Messerschmitts. With Spot, I found that I had designed a fuselage! His spot is on his side, the roundel marking of an English fighter plane, and the color bar of his tail is the color stripes of a plane's rudder.

In grade school, my mother, who was a professional tailor, would make all my clothes. I became obsessed with designing them myself.

When I was really little, we used to play Sega Genesis, and my older brother would play 'Sonic The Hedgehog 2,' and he'd be playing as Sonic, but he'd leave an unplugged controller for me to play with, and the whole time I thought I was playing as Tails.

That's my parenting style - 'Go watch the TV.' I'm one of 11 children, and my mother's parenting style was, 'There's the TV. Go watch it. Mommy's got 10 other people to take care of.'

For months, my parents had been trying to prepare me for the arrival of a real sibling. They had given me a doll to play with and encouraged me to take care of her. And when the baby, a little boy they named Rahm, finally arrived, they encouraged me to help take care of him, too.

My parents weren't around much, but I assumed everybody's family was the same. I didn't know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them.