I can't imagine my life without books. My father was an electrical engineer, and my mother was a public school teacher. Books were an integral part of my childhood.
I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so my academic background from childhood is a strong one, a good one.
In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint.
One of my favorite Finals was actually Detroit vs. Los Angeles, because it was home and home for me, personally. It was like my childhood home and my second home.
As a spiritual person, nature for me has always been a healing place. Going back all the way to my childhood on the farm, the fields and forests were places of adventure and self-discovery. Animals were companions and friends, and the world moved at a slower, more rational pace than the bustling cities where I'd resided my adult life.
Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds.
I missed a whole cycle of childhood, but I've never used it as a device for self-pity.
Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
My childhood was very sheltered. I grew up in a palace. But I lived in Morocco as a Moroccan citizen.
My mom and dad were 'helicopter parents,' literally. Meaning, I didn't have a nanny, so I went up in the helicopter. My entire early childhood education consisted of tagging along while they reported on car accidents, multiple-alarm fires, and shootouts.
My memories of my childhood are wonderful memories. I feel that I was privileged because I grew up in a beautiful city. It is Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily. It's a place filled with sun, close to the beach.
There's something about a roller coaster that triggers strong feelings, maybe because most of us associate them with childhood. They're inherently cinematic; the very shape of a coaster, all hills and valleys and sickening helices, evokes a human emotional response.
Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of.
I had a lot of chaos in my very early years before I was old enough to know what was going on, and then I just skated through the rest of my childhood without dealing with it.
I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.
It was a great experience for a kid, because it was a bunch of kids playing on pirate ships and water slides, so looking back on it, it was the fondest experience of my childhood.
I love to lounge, and I particularly love to eat outdoors. It's a throwback to my childhood in Hawaii. I have memories of coming out of the sea and eating corn chips with a strawberry vanilla slush.
I really love the Olympics: Daley Thompson's back-flip, Derek Redmond's father helping him finish the 400m after his hamstring snapped at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Sir Steve Redgrave - childhood memories are flooded with these moments and idols.
Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.
Studies have proven that early childhood education returns to society as much as $12 for every dollar invested. Our goal is to identify the most important development opportunities for children five years and younger, providing insight to transform early childhood education from a social policy issue into an economic imperative.
