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.

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the bigs.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

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

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

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

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

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

Purposes, plans, and achievements of men may all disappear like yon cloud upon the mountain’s summit; but, like the mountain itself, the things which are of God shall stand fast for ever and ever.

It feels good being a restaurant owner because it’s part of my dreams of being the biggest mogul.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

I grew up reading science fiction.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

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 want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there’s nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

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

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

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.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

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.

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

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

In the real world, children love me.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.