Thomas Peterffy Quotes

From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing. I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there.

I was six when my parents divorced, and that was tough for me.

As kids, there's somehow the fear that these bullies can end your life if they want to. Everything is blown up, and occasionally that kind of awful thing does happen.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

Bambi, to a kid, was scary.

I have met Aborigines younger than me who used to hide every time anyone official came round their camp for fear of being taken away.

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

My mother tried really hard to protect us, but occasionally, after afternoon cartoons of whatever was on... the nightly news would come on, and I'd see footage from the war zone, and I would hear the word 'Vietnam,' and I would know my dad was over there, and it was a very frightening experience for me.

I don't want, under any circumstances, to see in 'Haaretz' a picture of a woman with a baby in her arms crying while policemen deport her.

I was taken to a boarding school when I was four years old and taken away from my mother and my father, my grandparents, who I stayed with most of the time, and just abruptly taken away and then put into the boarding school, 300 miles away from our home.

When I was 11, I was terrified about the world.

There were times I'd be nervous walking home from elementary school, thinking, 'If that red tag from the power company saying our lights are turned off is on the door handle, I don't know what I'll do.'

Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I'm not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in.

I ended up living in fear for most of my childhood.

Then one day my sister abandoned me at the 1939 World's Fair, and that incident is the essence of In the Night Kitchen. I was standing there with hundreds of other people waving back at the little midgets dressed like bakers when I turned around and my sister was gone! The next thing I know I'm screaming and crying and policemen are taking me to a big place with tons of kids who had all been abandoned like me. At least I was old enough to give them a name and an address.

Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything.

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.

I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year.

Folks working late, I had a babysitter. I ain't about to sit here and name her. I was almost 8 when she came in late, woke me up with a game to play. Did a few things that it's hard to say. Told me to keep that secret safe. I'm trying to act like it ain't real. Had my innocence just stripped from me, and I still don't know how to feel.

What did I do to make Mommy leave?” “You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.” “Then why?” she’d wailed. “I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad. “It isn’t fair!” “No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.

I remember being in intensive care, looking at the clock and thinking 'don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep'. I can laugh about it now but I was petrified.

He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die. He's going to die anyway. He's so scared, Papa. The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared. The boy didn't answer. He just sat there with his head down, sobbing. You're not the one who has to worry about everything. The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? He said. He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

A girl my age had been murdered in these woods and I'd seen her last terrified moments, watched her bleed to death in this forest. A life like mine had ended here, and it didn't matter how many times I'd seen deaths in movies, it wasn't the same, and I wasn't ever going to forget it.

The little boy leaned against his father's chest and slowly nodded. "Yes," he said. "I heard all of the names, but I don't remember the other two… just the man who hurt Gillian." "That's the name I most want," Brodick said softly. "Who is he, Alec?" "Alec, please," Gillian began. "Tell me, Alec. Who is he?" "Baron," Alec whispered. "His name is Baron.