I played softball and basketball growing up. I really wanted to play football but both parents said no. I was mad for a second, then got over it. Now, just because I'm tall doesn't mean I can play basketball. I was waaaaay better at swinging a bat.
I think my friend Tom Hanks knows me. He understands me very well. He's always had a sort of parental feeling toward me. He knows I'm a big mush ball, which is just part of my personality.
When you ask most American parents why they want to have kids, it's to bring more joy into their lives. So, when you don't feel that all-encompassing joy, it must be that something is wrong with you. I think it's dissatisfaction that the expectation ...
My parents really did believe in the Golden Rule. They really did believe that all people should be treated equally. They had friends of every culture, we celebrated different holidays, but really, secretly behind it, they had no problem telling me w...
I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don't have to think about anything but skating. ...
My whole thing was, as much as I was inspired by what my parents do, and growing up on film sets, watching that made me really want to do that. I am my own person, and I think that the only thing with the Hemingway name is that it has gotten me in th...
My parents were both writers - they would type their manuscripts sitting side by side on the veranda of our house near Watford - so I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be a bluegrass singer, an architect, a landscape gardener, or to do so...
A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actua...
I had a happy, dramafree youth, growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. The only thing that was slightly unusual compared to most of my friends was that I was an only child... I don't think that's why my parents gave me a d...
Listening to Leonard, Madeleine felt impoverished by her happy childhood. She never wondered why she acted the way she did, or what effect her parents had had on her personality. Being fortunate had dulled her powers of observation.
At 11, I went to live with my maternal nan and granddad temporarily, after my parents separated, and Nan would let me have a go on her piano. My grandparents were like something out of the Noel Coward play, 'This Happy Breed,' and it was magical to h...
I tell young people that people aren't just going to flock to you as your mentors. You have to seek them out. It could be your next-door neighbor; it could be somebody upstairs from you, somebody down the block from you. An aunt or an uncle. Some rel...
My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn't pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn... If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinque...
You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next t...
When I was teaching Latin in girls' schools before I became a writer, I didn't much like it if parents would come in and say, 'We'll have less of the Ovid and Virgil and more of the grammar, please.' After all, I was the one in charge. That's how I f...
Frank: Is she dead?... What were you guys doing in the middle of the road, huh? What are you thinking? [Donnie shoots Frank] Donnie: [Close to tears, to Frank's passenger] Go home! Go home and tell your parents everything's going to be OK. Go!
Kimmy: [about David] Oh, my God. He is, like, so pathetic. I can't believe you're, like, related to him! Jennifer: Only on my parents' side. Kimmy: Yeah, but you guys are, like, twins and stuff. You must be from the cool side of the uterus.
Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don't cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That's going...
My parents made it clear that I should never display even the slightest disrespect to individuals who had the power to let me skip a half grade or move into more challenging classes. While it was all right for me to know more about a topic than my si...
When your child stops breathing 60 times a night, you don't worry about what's going on next year or even next week. You put aside thoughts about which preschool you're going to enroll him in and focus on how he's doing right now. It's not the Norman...
Make that extra effort for every relationship. Whether it's with your parents, your children, your husband or your friends. It makes a difference to them. I try to give my kids a lot of solo time where I play with them, talk to them, listen to them. ...
