Paul Johnson Quotes

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

I was 10 years old, taking the train by myself to see Saturday matinees, something you'd never let a kid do now. I got very hooked on it.

My bedtime was 8 P.M. But on 'Cosby' nights, I got to stay up until 8:30. Real big deal. This is when they could afford to do a completely different title sequence in TV every year. I always looked forward to that. It was like a mini musical at the top of the show. My favorite was the Top Hat fancy version.

I remember - when I was little, I remember playing 'Tecmo Bowl,' and I would be so excited to be Bo Jackson in the game that I wanted to watch him play in real life.

The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.

When I was growing up, and periodically going to India to visit my grandmother, my classmates would often ask me about the trains. There was an exotic fascination with people sitting on top of the carriages.

When I grew up in the '80s, all of my favorite TV shows always had these great openings, and it always got me excited.

I have liked trains since I was a boy, although I was never a train-spotter.

Who doesn't like playing with a railway? I think we've all got Thomas the Tank Engine in our blood.

I grew up taking the Long Island Railroad from Baldwin, New York into Penn Station and walking upstairs to Madison Square Garden. Those are some of my favorite memories.

When I was a kid the highlight of my week would be doing a fossil hunt at the local quarry... that kind of thing.

I'm not the most sophisticated person. I'm not the smartest person in the world. But, I know what makes me excited about life, from Spielberg movies to Michael Jackson music videos to cartoons on Saturday mornings, which made my childhood.

Maybe when we were shooting in the school, I was feeling more like it. Every time I go back to a school for work, I always feel so huge. Everything seems so little. The lockers seem smaller than I remember and the length of the hallways seem shorter when you're a kid.

Seeing you sleeping peacefully on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears and basset hounds, would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever because we could not go backwards in time.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.

When I was a kid, all I liked were books and chocolate.

I'll never forget that little apple box I stood on because I couldn't reach the microphone. My name was written on it and it's sitting at Diana Ross's house now. She has all my little doodling papers I would draw and write.

After all these years, I still feel like a boy when I'm on a stream

When I was a little kid I loved the Marx brothers and discovered Monty Python when I was 10 or 11-years-old. I used to take a tape recorder and hold it up in front of the TV to record entire episodes to play over and over again, so that I could memorise it.

I close my eyes and can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa.

I remember kids used to give me a penny for drawing them a horse. I loved horses, but I couldn't have one, so I would draw a horse for myself. I would make it food and a blanket for it to wear and a place to live.

My earliest childhood memories are of watching Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. I remember not liking Frankenstein then and going, "Who is this bald guy?" But I love it now.

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

I remember little things that break my heart. We were coming out of Michael's house one day, and he noticed my shoelaces were undone. He bent down and tied them. I almost cried. To me, it was such a gesture of love.

All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.