Quotes About Childhood

Right outside of Kansas City is Leavenworth, and there are, like, five prisons there. It was kind of the tapestry of my childhood. I was always fascinated. I wanted to know what was behind those walls.

The walls of our upstairs hallway testify that we once had photogenic children. There are rows of framed pictures that show them playing baseball, basketball, holding a toad, and smiling in the sunlight at their eager parents. Everything is orderly and bright.

I grew up in the suburbs outside of Newcastle, and there were blank walls, and there was a lot of space to imagine - the fields and the motorways - so I used to sit and talk to myself as different people.

I've always been painting, even as a little girl I was painting on the doors and walls of our house.

When I was a kid, all the walls in my room were papered with posters portraying Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. I think working with Van Damme was a great experiment. It was awesome!

I never thought it was fair for an 8-year-old child not to be able to afford shoes, or to wander the streets having to beg for money. To know that child's joy would end soon, when they realised there was no future.

As a child, I spent a lot of time wandering around the prairies and in the hills, and there was a sense that it was such a wide-open space, and there was kind of a feeling of potential. I could imagine anything happening there.

Until I was twelve years old, I led this wandering life, fishing, swimming, and making moccasins.

My novels are about a generation of Americans who lived between 1940 and 2000, who resisted the postwar political and cultural forces by choosing a wandering life of impoverishment and wonder. Inevitably, race and economics are a big part of their stories. Childhood, childishness, and children are never far.

I was a complete tomboy. I loved wandering out in storms or walking on the beaches in the dark. It was a very free upbringing, and I'm grateful to my parents for that.

I spent many, many hours in the stack at the University of Washington library just wandering around, when my dad was working, as a kid.

I wasn't like a Hollywood child actor - 'I'm five! I can sing, I can dance, I can act! I wanna be a star!'

I wasn't a bad kid. I was a good kid. But I had gotten in a lot of fights 'cause in the neighborhood I grew up in, that wasn't equated with bad behavior almost. I mean, we'd fought like it was another game. 'You wanna play stick ball today?' 'Nah, let's go fight.'

When I was a kid, they used to say, 'Oh man, you don't ever wanna leave New York.' I don't ever want to stay in New York!

When I was 5, I was always joking around like, 'Oh man, I wanna go to the Olympics.'

I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about. The first song I wrote was called 'Kitten.'

We were driving by the local athletic association in Orange Park, Florida, and there was this sign for T-ball signups. I was maybe 6 or 7, and my dad looked at me and said, 'Hey, do you wanna give this a try?'

As a kid, you always wanna play for either the Lakers or Boston just for the rivalry alone.

When I was a kid, I used to think, 'Man, if I could ever afford all the ice cream I want to eat, that's as rich as I ever want to be.'

I always wanted to be a rock star. That was my childhood dream. That's what I told everybody I was going to be when I grew up.

I wanted to be a teacher. I love children, so I wanted to deal with children. Then I wanted to be a veterinarian. But by the age of ten or eleven, when I opened my mouth and said, 'Oh, God, what's this?' I kind of knew teaching and being a veterinarian were gonna have to wait.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

When I was a child, I wanted to... go into space! To go to Mars. I wanted to explore and explore and explore. I wanted to go to the Lost World in South America - I was heartbroken to discover there were no dinosaurs; I still don't accept it.

Growing up, I wanted to be a musician. My mother, in typical Filipino-mom fashion, would always make me go up in front of people at parties to sing. Back then, as a kid, I was mortified. In retrospect, I see that doing that as a child helped me get over my fear of being in front of people.