Quotes About Childhood

I used to watch my father play the guitar and sing when I was a little boy. By the time I was 11, I knew what I wanted to do. My father really couldn't afford to spend $12 for a guitar for me, but he did. It was like an ordinary family spending $500 for a kid's gift.

If I seem to write most happily about the ordinary things that boys do who live in the country, it is because this is the part of my childhood that I look back upon with the greatest affection.

I was born in the Bronx but my parents hated living in the Bronx so they moved to Oregon when I was 6 months old.

My mother played the organ in church at Georgiana, and I sat on the seat beside her.

When I was 6 years old, I asked my parents for an organ. I don't have any idea why I wanted an organ.

I would sit at the organ and just start making up things by myself - I was maybe 7 years old, which was too young to even know how to notate music. So I never wrote anything down, but when I'd make things up, I'd memorize them.

Telling my grandchildren stories of my growing up is some of our favorite times spent together. They want to know what it was like and what I did as a child. They seem to be especially interested in the organic and simplistic setting I grew up in.

When we grew up, we had YMCAs. Organizations and places where kids went to play.

When you're a kid you're already trying to create your own world and organize the one in front of you, but then you get all insecure around 6th grade and don't think you have a right to share that.

I have three libraries. As a gift, a friend alphabetized and organized my main library of novels, history books, and nonfiction. Then I have a photo-book collection. Then there's this nearly whole room of my childhood books. I've also got cookbooks and a big collection of horse-related books.

I was a big kid who never played any organized sports. You played a lot of sports in the streets and I excelled at that, but I was never confident enough to go out for Little League. I was afraid I might get cut, or I might not be able to hit the ball.

I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.

I grew up in a family that was multifaceted, sexually oriented, and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working, my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.

I am originally a surd who was born in Delhi in 1982, just two years before the Sikh riots, so all my childhood pictures are in baby frocks with ponytails, as my parents wanted to hide the fact that I was a Sikh boy, given the riots. My dad worked for a travel agency, and we soon moved to Saudi Arabia.

I originally wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. Then I had this huge fear of black holes because my brother learned a bunch of stuff about it, and he's like, 'Oh, yeah, if you go into one you're never coming back.'

I originally thought I'd grow up to be a woman. I didn't question that when I was little.

I've always liked the Muppets. I watched 'The Muppet Show' in England every week as a child. The show was originally broadcast in England.

My father played music, so I was always around music, even from the time I was born. My father actually was the one that originally got me into music.

My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).

I grew up in Orlando.

I was born in New Orleans, and I wasn't allowed to go to the movies.

I did grow up in New Orleans. I grew up right on the lake, right across the levee.

I'd always been insecure. Being the fourth of five kids means attention is divided five ways, and to do this equally is impossible. I grew up feeling like the little orphan in the family, the one who didn't fit in.

I'd seen 'Punky Brewster,' I'd seen 'Webster,' I saw 'Annie,' and it was time to either be an orphan or an actress.