Quotes About Childhood

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first 'feeling' for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

When I was little, my parents belonged to a cult, a big Buddhist sect called Soka Gakkai. I didn't have any particular sentiment for or against religion, but I did feel bad about my parents' poverty and how it made them depend on that cult.

I was raised by parents who really admired the religious leaders of the left, as many 60s and 70s liberals did.

I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world.

When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.

Cancer magnifies the in-betweenness of young adulthood: You're not a child anymore, yet you're not fully ready to live in the adult world, either. After my diagnosis, I moved back into my childhood bedroom. And as I get sicker, I increasingly rely on my parents to take care of me.

But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

Children don't just play any more - they're far too busy learning to fence and taking extra French classes. In the end, you're actually doing more damage to your children by trying to hot-house them. It's far better to remain a calm parent.

Being a celebrity, you can remain a child for ever, almost. You get away with more; you can get too pampered and it's not healthy.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

I lived in L.A. for a year when I was four - my dad was doing a sabbatical at UCLA - so it always remained quite a familiar place.

We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.

Where Americans might coo over a child's most inane remark to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening.

I had a remarkably happy childhood; whatever scars I have are self-inflicted.

I was quite an odd child. We grew up in the middle of nowhere in Northumberland - it was lovely, idyllic, but we had remarkably little contact with other people.

Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries.

When I was a young boy, I used to gaze through the microscope of my father at the insects in amber that he kept in the house. And they were remarkably well preserved, morphologically just phenomenal.

Imagination and invention go hand in hand. Remember how lack of resources was never a problem in childhood games? Shift a few pieces of furniture around the living room, and you have yourself a fort.

I don't have any beauty shop memories. I remember the barber shop.

I owe my life to my father. I remember that my first Christmas present was a ball. In the district where we lived, there weren't many kids who had one.

It was implanted in me that I came from a different class - an elevated class. I was cushioned by servants. I don't remember doing anything for myself. I only played and went to school.

My dreams and aspirations when I was a child for as long as I can remember was to be an entertainer.

My mom says that when I was a little kid, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I don't remember that.

As a child, I remember my own intensive interest in biology, birds, other animals and flowers and was determined at an early age to become a scientist.