Every Christmas now for years I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood.

I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality - you're told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.

Growing up with the childhood that I had I learned to never let a man make me feel helpless and it also embedded a deep need in me to always stick up for women.

The surrealists and the modern movement in painting as a whole seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.

Concepts like individuals have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

I had the pleasure as Robin said to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity.

Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

There is no correlation between a childhood success and a professional athlete.

I feel lucky because I was a nerd which I talk about in the book but I had academic success so through that because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school.