I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think h...
Mostly you love them and you cherish their milestones but occasionally you do want to tape them to a chair. That would be child abuse, DO NOT TAPE YOUR CHILDREN TO CHAIRS. If you want to tape your baby dolls to chairs, be my guest. I am fairly certai...
Write every day. Don't kill yourself. I think a lot of people think, 'I have to write a chapter a day' and they can't. They fall behind and stop doing it. But if you just write even one hundred words a day, it's not that much. By the end of a month, ...
You know that I had heard so many times people say things like, 'You could never write 'Harry Potter' and have it be about Harriett Potter because nobody would read it; people only want to read an adventure story if it's about a boy,' and I thought, ...
As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all en...
My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I...
We all have a natural instinct to protect children from harm. It's never fun to see a child hurt, even if it's just a scraped knee. But on the other hand, children need to take on physical challenges to learn and grow, and scraped knees and other bum...
I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of de...
When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusiasm with which my cousin Brenda, a year and a half younger, accepted her mother's definition of her as someone who needed to go to bed at six-thirty an...
Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest...
Christmases are never the same. They change from year to year, and they are never really perfect, no matter how hard we try to force them to be so. What is perfect is the miracle in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and the love of God that continues to burs...
As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got t...
Sophia: All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men, but I ain't never thought I'd have to fight in my own house!
Bernie Rose: [snaps] You didn't tell me you were ripping off the family Nino: [snaps back] FAMILY... What family? The same family that calls me kike to my face [shouts] Nino: TO MY FACE! I'm fifty nine years old and they still keep pinching my cheeks...
Fantine: There's a child who sorely needs me, Please M'sieur, she's but that high. Holy God, is there no mercy? If I go to jail she'll die! Javert: I have heard such protestations, every day for twenty years. Let's have no more explanations. Save you...
Ebenezer Scrooge: Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me? Ghost of Christmas Past: I am. Ebenezer Scrooge: But... you're just a child! Ghost of Christmas Past: I can remember nearly 1900 years. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.
[changing his baby son's diaper] Police Chief Aiello: Hey, hey, let Papa change you. Come on, everything will be swell. Come on, come on, come on... [removes the diaper] Police Chief Aiello: What the fuck is this? What is this? Huh? What's that? LOOK...
Simin: Your daughter's future isn't important to you? Judge: There are a lot of children who live in this country. You say none of them have a future? Simin: I prefer my child doesn't grow up in this situation. I have the right as a mother. Judge: Wh...
Mrs. Crawley, Amy's Nanny: Miss Nichols. Dorothy Michaels: Oh, my stars! Julie: Dorothy, this is Mrs. Crowley. She helps me with Amy. Mrs. Crawley, Amy's Nanny: THAT CHILD WILL NEVER LEARN ANYTHING IF... Julie: Thank you, Mrs. Crowley. [whispering, t...
Both my grandmothers had upright pianos, and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up, and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the ...
[L.D. Newsome goes to turn the television back on] Jack Twist: You sit down, you ol' son of a bitch! [L.D. stops in his tracks] Jack Twist: This is my house! This is my child! And you are my guest! Now sit the hell down before I knock your ignorant a...
