I didn’t play with other children.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

I think what we’ve found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging. I think that we’re really going to see this huge shift where a lot of industry is and products are just going to be remade to be social.

I have worked hard since my childhood and worked as a labourer. I put my mind and heart into it.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

But ever since I was a kid, I was always the winner.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

I’ve dreamed about doing music since I was three or four years old.

True politeness consists in being easy one’s self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

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

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

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.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

I wasn’t a kid growing up thinking, ‚One day I’ll get an Oscar and make a speech.‘ That wasn’t on my mind.

The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

People are really talkative in New York. Someone always comes up to me and says ‚Hi‘ during the day.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I didn’t have a father figure in the house.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

I can’t remember what made my dad take us karting for the first time, I can’t remember really. I was into motorsport by then and I knew everything, and every driver, it was around 2009, 2008. That’s when I first properly knew about Formula One. Those were the days.

As a kid, I got three meals a day. Oatmeal, miss-a-meal and no meal.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‚feeling‘ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights.

When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.

My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

When it comes to knowing what to say, to charm, I always had it.

As a kid, I’d go into the bathroom when I was having a tantrum. I’d be in the bathroom crying, studying myself in the mirror. I was preparing for future roles.

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

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t.

I have no problem if someone wants to hug me – if I know him!

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Sixth grade was a big time, in my childhood, of hoops and friendship, and coming up with funny things.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

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.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.