The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

God gave me some weird, beautiful scent that makes men and women go crazy. People compare it to Carvel. It is a whale of a smell.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

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’ve always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It’s the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.

I was reared in the church, in the Presbyterian Church.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

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 into tears. It wasn’t what I had imagined at all.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

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.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

I grew up in a funny way.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

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

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

We must begin seeing other creatures as equal. Existence makes us all equal.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.

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.

My mother did not like children.

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.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn’t know exactly what.

You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I’d probably want to die in San Sebastian.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

I hate what I look like on TV, and I want to look better, and nothing makes the mothers more jealous.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

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

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

Even though the risks of death are higher driving than flying, many people would rather drive simply because they feel they have more control driving. The facts are that only a few hundred people die a year flying, and 44,000 are killed a year driving.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

I am a normal guy from the Black Forest, and I do not compare myself with the geniuses.

In the real world, children love me.

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.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

David Icke reminded me of Malcolm X.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.