My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable.

I learned early to drink beer, wine and whiskey. And I think I was about 5 when I first chewed tobacco.

If it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

I grew up reading science fiction.

I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

Temptation is just the feeling that you’re the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That’s something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I’m in, the same thing exists! But it’s 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you’re in the limelight, you can get anything you want.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.

When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‚I never want to be alone.‘ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

Oh, 1994, April 27. There won’t be a day like that ever again. I mean, the sky was blue, with a blueness that had never been there before.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

I never needed much, and I never thought I’d get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

It feels kinda weird being back in a high school cause I haven’t been in a high school for about a year. So um, it’s kinda interesting coming back, and y’know seeing the lockers, with all the signs, the handmade signs, so being in high school again is a little bit strange but in a good way.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

I am completely fascinated by the differences and comparisons between real life and fairy tales because we’re raised as little girls to think that we’re a princess and that Prince Charming is going to sweep us off our feet.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‚how‘ and ‚why‘ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

I didn’t play with other children.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

I’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

In my day, there were no vet video games.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.