My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more.

Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of.

She is the first head of government in history to give a whole country its second childhood.

My kitchen looks like the one from my childhood - very homey, with a little bit of Alice in Wonderland!

Childhood is a promise that is never kept.

That said, let me add that Joan and I never want him to be a child actor. We both feel that it takes away their childhood and puts untold pressure on children.

For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

Childhood is a short season.

Chocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: Deliciusness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.

I spent much of my later childhood and adolescence very, very involved and interested in art, and particularly in animated movies.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.