Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

I have this bookmark with glued-on macaroni. I made it in the fourth grade while in detention for giving a girl a tattoo using two rocks rubbed together and a stick.

And after every audition I booked, my parents would buy me a Barbie, so that was it for me: You got a Barbie, and you got to hang out with friends. And I thought it was just the best thing ever.

I was really shy as a kid.

I was an only child, so I was very demanding. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I wasn't very pleasant.

When you're a kid, there is always a club that catches your attention.

I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting...

My sister, myself, and my cousins would put on shows for our parents and charge them to come and watch, apparently. That's what I'm told. My parents said I knew how to milk it.

I did my first little kids' musical, 'The Sound of Music,' at 5, in a jungle gym, essentially. I was a made-up Von Trapp child, Ingrid Von Trapp.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

I didn't have the easiest childhood. I was never the popular girl in school growing up. I was always the lone black girl or the lone fat girl or the long tall girl, so that has made me more...

I do not want any child in America to have my childhood because it was taken away from me because I just wasn't good enough; well I am good enough now.

I have three sons, and the oldest wants to play pirates all the time. It has all these associations of living some kind of very free life. It's interesting for me as a filmmaker to show a whole...

'The 400 Blows' was so much like my own childhood, it really stunned me.

I was a rotten kid. My excitement came from seeing what I could get away with.

I'd fantasized about being married since I was a little girl and dressed up in my mum's wedding dress.

When I was little, I didn't know you got paid for acting. My parents put the money in the bank for me, but I just thought it was this fun thing that I was so excited to do. You got to be on the set...

I'd even refuse to go to school when I was at primary age, and if you look at any class photo with me in it I'm always the kid with his hand in front of his face, or turning away from the camera.

The Rocky Mountains realize - nay, exceed - the dream of my childhood. It is magnificent, and the air is life-giving.

Being a little kid, you don't hear much about racism. You figure everybody's the same. If racism isn't taught, you're just a black kid and a white kid together.

I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood.

I started training judo when I was 5 years old. I didn't know much. My mom just took me and my brother to do some judo because we were very energetic. We did that for a couple of years. I don't know...

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I...

When I was little, my dad used to call me 'Bandarella,' because I was a mess - a Bandar is a monkey in Hindi. I was not a girly girl and would always break something and would be running around and...

Ah, my dad's whistle. On holidays when I was a kid, we would all be off in the rock pools along the beach. When it came time to go, we'd hear the whistle and we'd all come running. Like dogs!

I knew that I had it tough compared to children around me. But I felt like I needed it. I think I had the wisdom as a child to know that it would help me later on.

When you're eight years old nothing is your business.

Every kid has a toy that they believe is their best friend, that they believe communicates with them, and they imagine it being alive, their toy horse or car or whatever it is. Stop - motion is the...

My father had a big brick cell phone, before anyone had a cell phone, because he was really just into that kind of thing - communication devices. I grew up between my father's laboratory and my...

I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor.