Calvin and Hobbes are the only two characters from my childhood reading that I return to with any regularity, and they have grown with me, yielding newer and deeper meaning.
My love of literature goes back to my childhood.
There's slowly been a kind of shift in how we think about childhood. It's like childhood almost extends to 20 or 22 even after the end of college. When I was growing up, there was this expectation that you were on your own now.
My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.
I was the class podiatrist. I never made it to class clown. I wasn't funny enough. I would examine feet and prescribe and ointment. It was a sad childhood.
At 9 years old, I moved in with my father because my mother could no longer care for me. Looking back, I now see so many similarities between my own childhood and that of my sons. My father stepped in when I needed him, and that gave me the chance for a better life. That's what I'm doing for my boys now.
For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years, I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction.
I am just trying to be a good, protective mother. I want to give Bertie as normal a childhood as possible while preserving his privacy.
Since childhood, I have been a cricket fanatic.
For some men, life seems to be one long attempt to escape childhood and all the fears of childhood. That's what many of us are doing.
When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad.
I spent my childhood eating. The only exercise I got was trying to twist off the cap of a jar of mayonnaise.
Obviously because of my personal connection to Mandela and having had his story as part of my childhood, I knew how awesome he was.
I know it's fashionable to blame your childhood for everything nowadays - thank you, Freud. The thing is, though, I really don't feel scarred by mine. But perhaps if I'd been in therapy for 10 years, and you were able to read the records, you'd disagree.
