“My childhood was tough. I started with nothing and was dealt a dysfunctional card. My father was a severe alcoholic and my mom worked as a cook and a nurse at night.”— Gordon Ramsay, cnn.com
“We're all damaged, it seems. Some of us, more than others....We carry the damage with us from childhood, then as grownups, we give as good as we get....Ultimately, we all do damage....And then, we set about the business of fixing whatever we can.”— Mimi Schmir, Dr. Meredith Grey, Ellen Pompeo, imdb.com
“There's something known as the magical age, between nine and 12, when a child's psyche is more malleable.”— Kimberly A. Harrison, Dr. Spencer Reid, Matthew Gray Gubler, imdb.com
“"But there is another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck – absolute and total luck. When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us. When we strip away our luck and privilege and consider where we'd be…”— Melinda Gates, news.stanford.edu
“Everyone sees their childhood with different lenses.”— Jas Waters, Vera Herbert, Randall Pearson, Sterling K. Brown, imdb.com
“From that day as a cute kid to this moment, he never gave up dreaming. It was that dream that changed culture all over the world.”— Al Sharpton, youtube.com
“Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep but it's not so bad I don't worry and I don't weep. In fact I'm glad. Because I get up off my pillow and I flip on the light. I get down and get hip in the still of the night I stretch and I yawn and then I breathe real deep And dance myself to sleep. I hoof a…”— Jim Henson, amazon.com
“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”— Jim Henson, amazon.com
“I became terrified of him, for him, of the nightmare which was becoming reality for him, the more so as I could recognize similar thoughts and feelings in myself, even though they were hidden, locked up in my own depths.”— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com
“When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, “smoked salmon and Bach.””— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com
“Even when I was a kid, my imaginary friend would play with the kid across the street. I'd be like, "Hey, so I guess I'll see you later," and he's, like, "Whatever, queer". That's a hate crime!”— Daniel Tosh, amazon.com
“One of the problems in life is that when you're a kid, you have a certain way of working out disagreements...and those laws do not work in the adult world.”— Matt Goldman, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld, imdb.com
“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”— Nora Ephron, imdb.com
“From sunrise to sunset, I was in the forest, sometimes far from the house, with my goat who watched me as a mother does a child. All the animals in the forest became my friends, even dangerous and poisonous ones. Thanks to my goat-mother and my Indian nurse, I have always enjoyed the trust of animal…”— Diego Rivera, amazon.com
“I miss the nights when my parents And dreamcatchers were enough to keep me safe Instead of speed walks and keychains loaded down With pepper spray.”— Holly Riordan, amazon.com
“You might look at me and say, Hey, there's a happy kid; a little hyper, a little rambunctious, but happy all the same. And so there I was, humming along, when suddenly Dorothy would pop up out of the blue, snatch me up, and take me along on one of her lost weekends.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I just clung closer to her and knew the boogeyman couldn't get me, not as long as Mama held me in her arms, not as long as I didn't think about the little girl who had been cut up and stuffed in a trunk -- only a block away from our house -- the one crime that freaked me out when I was still very yo…”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I was afraid of the boogeyman until I was fourteen or fifteen. The boogeyman was the devil who could appear in any form. Before I went to sleep, I had to look under my bed. The boogeyman was death and death was the greatest fear of all.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I've tried to put the pieces together. I wish I could prove it by trotting out blood tests, but I can't. All I can do is tell you the story I believe, the one I've heard from people who were there and should know.”— Etta James, amazon.com