Money isnt everything. Do you get married because of money? Do you have kids because of money?
We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.
I had been a reader of THOR in college. I had read the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stuff. I had loved it. I had been a Norse mythology fan since I was a kid and was thrilled to discover a comic that was kind of based on Norse mythology-there's not a one-to-one correspondence, but there's no reason there should be. I was delighted to find it, and I didn't care that it wasn't exactly the myth. For one thing, Thor didn't have red hair in the comics. I was fine with that.
Kids accept where they are because they don't know the past. They know what they have; they know where they are.
I just didn't want any order in anything. I have to leave an ordered life for them - the kids - and my job. I have to be at my desk at a certain time, and I have to answer e-mails within a certain time period.
I call the years when our children are between six and twelve the "golden years," not because everything's perfect . . . but because the kids are capable and independent. . . . They're becoming fascinating human beings who continually astound us and make us laugh. And they build our self-esteem. They still adore us for the most part, not yet having reached that age of thinking everything we do is dumb, old-fashioned and irrelevant.
Now I am . . . like anyone with a strong preference for the fly rod, totally indifferent to how large a fish I catch by comparison with other fishermen. So when a fifteen-year-old called Fred, fishing deep in midsummer with a hideous plastic worm, caught a four and a half pounder . . . I naturally felt no resentment beyond wanting to break the kid's thumbs.
Kids today look at me like I'm Neil Young. Nirvana is the band their parents listen to.
In terms of bullying, there are so many new laws in America, I am not sure about worldwide, but in America, the laws for bullying are getting strict. And I am really excited of how strict they are and I think it has cut down on a lot of bullying. As a kid I was a bully and I was bullied. I lived both sides of it. To see what is being done with bullying now is super important.
I was never one of those kids that felt like I had to go to practice or that I was being made to go to practice or forced to play the game. Baseball was a natural fit for me.
Fruit often ends up rotting in the crisper drawer. Well, that's the wrong place to put it. Out of sight, out of mind. The kids all know where the junk-food shelf is. Make the fruit that easy to get to. Put a big huge bowl of fruit on the counter.
All these kids who are growing up on Skrillex and all this digital music- what are they gonna think when they hear rock'n'roll?
I would let my kids watch this stuff way before I'd let them watch something like 'Full House' that I think would make them stupid.
Once you have kids, you think like a parent. You get a lot more protective.
I lived my life as a - as a part-white, part-black but then sometimes-Jewish kid.
To have kids and not be there every night is tough.
I attribute being a good center fielder to many things, but being outside with friends as a kid, running around and racing, that was a big part of it.
You have to give kids from ordinary families a ladder. You have to show them there's a way out.
People are more easily manipulated when they don't have information. If you ensure that kids grow up without basic reading skills, math skills, and so forth, then you ensure that they can't act effectively.
When I was a kid, I liked the newer music that was coming out. I have never really felt confined by any style of music. I would play in bands that were soul bands or that played standards - any kind of music that I enjoyed playing.
There's a lot of kids' shows that are really popular ratings-wise, but they don't sell a lot of stuff. A character on a backpack just doesn't have the same appeal as watching it on TV.
Obviously I'd love to have kids and all that. Luckily, as a man, there's not such an egg timer on it, but I'd like to be able to pick them up without Nurofen first.
Everybody thinks that you go to Africa and you build a school, or you teach English, or you build a hospital. But actually all you need to do is play football with kids for six months and then after they've trusted you, you tell them about the truth of Aids, and that their grandmother didn't die from witchcraft, she died from Aids. And that's the biggest difference you can make.
Where do I get my seriousness? You can't help but grow up fast when your parents get divorced. You see your mother go to get food stamps and she's making fifty dollars too much to get them, with four kids to support.
I've had such extremes in my life. From being this kind of wild kid, to one year studying to be a Franciscan priest at the seminary....I was very frustrated.
