Quotes About Childhood

We go through life owned by the stories we tell ourselves which are often historic and charged narratives - things we've learnt since childhood that we don't even consciously realise are going on.

I always tell my mom that if she would have just bought me a Barbie when I was little, I would have gone into real estate.

If you ask anyone in animation, how long they've been into animation, they'll pretty much always tell you that it's since they can remember, and I'm no exception. I've always just loved drawing and loved cartoons.

I remember as a little girl I could tell you the name of the dog next door, but I couldn't tell you the names of the kids. The dog was my best friend. I love animals. They give so much to you and demand so little.

Most of my childhood memories of my father are of being ignored. I was his namesake, but nothing I did ever pleased or even interested him. He enjoyed telling me I couldn't do anything right.

When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.

When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story.

Some of my earliest memories, from when I was six or seven, are of going to see Pedro Infante movies and telling my mother, 'When I grow up I want to be like them.'

My parents broke up when I was six. Before, I was a very active, naughty child, but after my father left me, I stopped talking. I became very good at hiding my emotions. I felt so ashamed of telling others that I didn't have a father, because that was not common in the 1960s.

My father never played with me. I can remember my father picking me up - once. I can remember my father telling me behind a closed door that he loved me - once.

I never really set out to be a comedian, but as a kid, I loved doing sketches and playing characters. And then a great friend kept telling me I should be a comedian, so I followed her advice and gave it a shot.

My father was a particularly zealous Christian Scientist, but young Christian Science children, who have little choice but to believe what their parents are telling them, are taught that illness originates in errors in their parents' and, eventually, their own thinking.

My parents - Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth - discovered my talent for singing when I was a kid. I remember them telling me that I sang a classical piece after listening to it a couple of times when I was two-and-a-half years old.

My mother tells me I regaled people with stories but I don't remember that. And she disputes the idea that I might be chronically shy. She says I was the most outgoing of all of us.

Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse will speak when she tells fairy tales.

My mom tells me the first show we saw was 'The Secret Garden,' but I don't remember that.

When I was little, my mom tells me, I used to say things like, 'Mom do you hear the string section? Do you hear the string section?' And she would look at me and say, 'No honey, I don't know what you're talking about.'

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

I'm one of 10 children, and all my brothers call me Jim. And all my sisters... well, they call me something even more affectionate. My mother calls me James, and I do what my mother tells me.

My sister tells me I began singing before I could even talk. My first performance was of a song called 'My Blue Heaven,' which I began singing when I was a year and a half.

We had a black and white telly in the corner of the room that had three channels. There was nothing to keep you around the house. It was a different time.

For me, Christmas was always about presents. As a child, we each had an allotted place in the sitting room for the ceremonial unwrapping and mine was perched beside the telly on a Moroccan pouffe. We would watch our mum with bated breath as she divided up the gifts.

When I talk about it, now people imagine I had an impoverished childhood, especially when I tell people we used to have to put coins in the side of the telly. But we were really happy. Mum never complained, there was always music playing in the house and we were always dancing around. It was a great childhood.

Phillip Schofield has always been my primary crush. Sure, I danced in front of the telly when Shakin' Stevens was on Top of the Pops, but that was because my rudimentary grasp of how telly works made this five-year-old think she could be seen by him. So that was less love, more showing off.