My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks.
One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.
Pears are my favorite fruit! Reminds me of childhood.
My childhood memories are amazing; I had freedom in every way - but I see everything from a different perspective now that I live outside.
My heart goes out to the Lindsay Lohans and Britneys who have really had childhood taken from them and probably missed important developmental steps. They have become sort of 'public domain' and something to be made money on. There's no sense of self there, I'm sure of it.
It's natural for a child to assume that his or her own childhood is unremarkable.
They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.
From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.
I grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. And I had a pretty idyllic childhood. I felt that I was kind of this outspoken girl, I was considered. I was a girl who talked a lot and didn't think my voice had any less value than anyone around me. Apparently, that was strange.
My folks were drunks, and I had a rough childhood - really rough - in fact, rougher than I thought about.
Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky.
My childhood name that my father gave me, my mother, my grandmother, grandfather, family and friends all call me T.I.P.
A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.
'Home Alone' had become the absolute biggest film I had ever done, and it became the third-highest grossing film of all time. So clearly it had an effect on me that is unparalleled to any other film experience in my childhood.
Pain is part of the past. There isn't one of us who doesn't still carry childhood wounds. Some are more horrific than others, but no matter how painful your young memories are, there were also glorious moments that kept you alive, or you would not be here today.
I had an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother, and though I look back fondly on my childhood, I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a single kids' bathroom, it's going to get a little tense at times.
Video games and outdoor sports - that was my childhood.
Some of my happiest childhood memories are going to the movies with my dad and seeing whatever was out that week. In 1977, when I was 7, it was 'Star Wars.' That was a life-changer.
It started when I was eight years old. I first heard the cello on the radio, and I loved the sound. It was such a magical, beautiful sound. I dedicated my entire childhood to cello, practising like crazy.
I think anybody who works with Malcolm, the first thing they go, 'Holy cow! I'm working with Theo!' because that was part of my childhood.
A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape.
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.
My father's music is all I remember from my childhood.
I had spent my childhood making up adventures in my head. Then I realized when I went to acting school that there were adventures written down, and you could learn lines, and you could do the adventures for real, not just in your head.
I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.
The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.
I had really loving parents and a happy childhood.
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
Investing in early childhood nutrition is a surefire strategy. The returns are incredibly high.
My father and his brothers and sisters were childhood Irish jig champions in the Bronx. At our family celebrations, they all get out and do the jig. And of course, the younger generation, me and my cousins and my brothers, we have our own Americanized renditions of the Irish jig, which is a bit more like 'Lord of the Dance.'
Since childhood, sports has been one of the most important influences in my life.
My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can't stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that I couldn't do things half-heartedly.
I come from a really poor family, and when I started doing campaigns, it changed everything for my family. I am not complaining; I had a beautiful childhood - we didn't have a lot of money, but there was always food on the table, and my parents saved money so that in the holidays we would all get in the car and drive to the mountains.
All of my friends, I consider childhood friends because we met when I was probably 13, and I'm still friends with them today. It's really nice that I have that core group.
I asked myself what it was that I wanted from writing and where my connection with books began, and the answer to that question was definitely in childhood, because that's where my connection with reading began.
I'm a really nostalgic person. I love taking photos and video and having memories. I remember all my childhood videos that my dad used to take. I think that's really what life is about - especially when you start a family of your own.
