When I was a child, I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it's still there.
‐‐ Romola Garai
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.
‐‐ Karl Lagerfeld
When I was a child, I'd see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it.
‐‐ Oliver Stone
When I was a child I devoured every book I could get my hands on. I loved losing myself in colourful and dramatic stories - and my absolute favourite was 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.' Everything about it electrified me, and when I re-read Roald Dahl's books as an adult it surprised me.
‐‐ David Walliams
When I was a child I didn't care about getting an education, and I didn't finish high school.
‐‐ Mary J. Blige
When I was a child, I didn't fly - we couldn't afford to fly. Flying was for rich people.
‐‐ Jeff Smisek
When I was a child, I dreaded blindness. We used to ask: 'Would we rather be blind or deaf?' I said I'd rather be blind, even though I was scared of it. I couldn't bear not being able to hear music or talk to people.
‐‐ Sue Townsend
When I was a child, I felt at times that I had been born into an insane asylum, that much of human life appeared to be an insane asylum. It was bewildering.
‐‐ Nathaniel Branden
When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.
‐‐ J. M. G. Le Clezio
When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss.
‐‐ Margaret Mahy
When I was a child I had a crush on Abraham Lincoln. Why I would choose to reveal this, I know not.
‐‐ Julia Roberts
When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not the only one to ask for that - not love, but absolute fidelity.
‐‐ Claire Denis
When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room. I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.
‐‐ Boris Becker
When I was a child I had something called Perthes' Disease which meant I was on crutches, so I was bullied at school and all that sort of stuff.
‐‐ Antony Beevor
When I was a child, I had wax in my ears. Dad didn't take me to the doctor, he used me as a night light.
‐‐ Les Dawson
When I was a child I liked watching shows about bounty hunters and Canadian Mounties. I liked the 'Lone Ranger,' I liked shows where the guy saved the girl from the villain. I just liked those kinds of things and I wanted to be a guy like that, you know, that would save the damsel in distress.
‐‐ Duane Chapman
When I was a child, I lived in Morocco, and I would always buy a lot of beads from the markets and to make jewellery for friends. Later, at 18, I would do my own clothes and make my own patterns. When I first came to New York, people just assumed I was a stylist because I was so into fashion.
‐‐ Maripol
When I was a child, I loved old people. My New Hampshire grandfather was my model human being.
‐‐ Donald Hall
When I was a child, I loved 'The Marble Faun' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The reason I liked it was because it had a beautiful binding. When you're a kid, you like books because they're pretty to look at, and this one had a white calfskin cover and gold edges. That was enough to make me love it.
‐‐ Edmund White
When I was a child, I pretended that I had my own cooking show. I would stand at the kitchen counter with an empty bowl and spoon and talk in a silly voice, explaining the concoction I was creating.
‐‐ Kimberly Schlapman
When I was a child, I probably should have been medicated about my obsession with The Spice Girls. I had the Buffalo shoes, a customised Baby Spice necklace - when I say custom-made, it was made out of plastic from the local mall - and a Union Jack dress.
‐‐ Blake Lively
When I was a child, I saw in the news that a person from Belitung had done well in sports in Jakarta, and I just couldn't imagine that it was possible for someone from here to become famous, and it's still very isolated out here.
‐‐ Andrea Hirata
When I was a child, I saw my father diving to the deepest point in the ocean with the U.S. Navy.
‐‐ Bertrand Piccard
When I was a child I thought I saw an angel. It had wings and kinda looked like my sister. I opened the door so some light could come into the room, and it sort of faded away. My mother said it was probably my Guardian Angel.
‐‐ Denzel Washington
When I was a child, I thought I was going to be a paleontologist because I loved dinosaurs. I loved monster movies and sci-fi, and then 'Star Wars' came out, and I was completely out of my mind with that, with 'Close Encounters,' and then I thought maybe I was going to go into special effects makeup, which I thought was awesome.
‐‐ Dee Bradley Baker
When I was a child, I used to cry all the time.
‐‐ Gwen John
When I was a child, I used to eat sugar Frosted Flakes with chocolate milk, but I digest, I mean digress.
‐‐ Stephen Furst
When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.
‐‐ Yayoi Kusama
When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.
‐‐ Melvin Burgess
When I was a child, I wanted to be... a fairy. I still do, really, except that now I've now graduated to wanting to be a pixie.
‐‐ Jaime Winstone
When I was a child, I wanted to be a jockey. I love horses, but it's not practical to have one in London. I also wanted to be an accountant, which isn't glamorous at all, but my dad was one, and I quite liked maths.
‐‐ Lydia Leonard
When I was a child I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant. I suppose you have all sorts of thoughts as a child and at the time I figured that it was a way to avoid doing anything like going on stage.
‐‐ Saffron Burrows
When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.
‐‐ Philippa Gregory
When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I had really bad buckteeth. I didn't want to get braces, but my mom said I couldn't be an actor if I didn't get the braces. So, I got the braces.
‐‐ James Franco
When I was a child, I wanted to be important.
‐‐ Laura Amy Schlitz
When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.
‐‐ Peter Ackroyd
When I was a child, I wanted to... go into space! To go to Mars. I wanted to explore and explore and explore. I wanted to go to the Lost World in South America - I was heartbroken to discover there were no dinosaurs; I still don't accept it.
‐‐ Brian Blessed
When I was a child, I wanted to raise horses in Wyoming or be a cabin boy on a pirate ship.
‐‐ Sadie Jones
When I was a child, I wanted to watch things that made me laugh. It's attacking boredom, as simple as that. I was 19 when I first went to a comedy club - I wanted to do it, so I gave it a try and that was it. I found my office.
‐‐ Dylan Moran
When I was a child, I was always nicking my mum's jewellery to wear, and I loved to drape a massive Chinese shawl around me from our fancy-dress box. I was obsessed with a feather and rabbit-fur collar from the age of three and attempted to make one with my friend, whose father was a gamekeeper.
‐‐ Alice Temperley
When I was a child, I was certain that I could remember what it was like to live on Venus; I could remember what it was like to live in the American Plains. I could remember. And it's ancient memory. We all have it. It's just that some of us access it more than others.
‐‐ Patti Smith
When I was a child, I was living in the housing projects of Philadelphia. I didn't even have a Christmas tree.
‐‐ Bill Cosby
When I was a child, I was one of the kids who wore black all the time, and when the kids asked me why I wore black, I said things like, 'I'm mourning the death of modern society.' I mean, I was a riot.
‐‐ Maggie Stiefvater
When I was a child, I was referred to as the Danny Kaye of the family, because I was always impersonating and mimicking people. I was a song and dance man.
‐‐ Jason Mantzoukas
When I was a child, I was unable to go to any type of sleepaway summer camp because of health issues. Once I learned about the Lopez Foundation, I knew I wanted to get involved, send kids with kidney disease away to camp so they can still experience overnight camp with medical needs at hand.
‐‐ Sarah Hyland
When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.
‐‐ Jackie Chan
When I was a child, I went to stage school three times a week in the evenings - singing, ballet, tap, modern and acting, and I loved it.
‐‐ Michelle Dockery
When I was a child, I would draw these little stick-figures, and my mom would put them up all over the loft and tell me how wonderful they were. Then you get out there into the harsh reality of the world, and you realize not everybody loves every little thing you do the way your mom did.
‐‐ Julia Stiles
When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.
‐‐ Michael King
When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.
‐‐ A. S. Byatt
When I was a child, it was cool to be a scientist.
‐‐ Michio Kaku
When I was a child, it was my dream to be a professional footballer. When I was 14 I visited Milan's San Siro stadium and remember thinking how unbelievable it was. From then onwards I vowed that one day I would be playing there - and I am very proud that I achieved this and also for everything else I have managed to achieve in football.
‐‐ Andriy Shevchenko
When I was a child it was very clear what I was allowed to see and what I was not allowed to see and there was no discussion or option or negotiation. Whatever my mom said, that's what went down.
‐‐ Yul Vazquez
When I was a child, kids used to make fun of me because I was blind. But I just became more curious, 'How can I climb this tree and get an apple for this girl?' That's what mattered to me.
‐‐ Stevie Wonder