Bob Keeshan Quotes

I wish we could all have a telling room, a place where we go to tell our stories and listen to the stories of others; in our culture, the telling room might be around the dinner table or in the car on a long trip.

One of the problems of our youth is that the family unit is broken up. When we'd sit down to dinner together as a family, we'd learn about each other. We had something people don't get today.

I remember myself at 10 years old telling stories to my sisters and brother. This is something I did through my adolescence and even through my twenties.

My brothers and I grew up in a time where talking, storytelling, telling jokes was sometimes all you had. It wasn't like today, with so many options and portability.

I come from a big family where we tell big stories. All we had was the storytelling.

Even having all the time in the world, it's better to collaborate with your brothers and sisters. It's ultimately the richest experience.

The stories in 'Jim the Boy' are either made up or appropriated from some source other than my family. But the idea of a family telling stories to the kid, often to impart some kind of lesson, that's very familiar, and that's the way that I grew up.

When you look at a family, if you have a family that never interacts with each other, never has strong conversation with each other, never has disagreements, nine times out of ten you have a very cold family and they're not going to be, at the end, they're not going to be close.

I don't mind if the couple next to me is tense or the kids are whiny. I'd even be happy to hear an honest argument, evidence of thinking. I'd like to know these teeth-perfect families don't just buy each other stuff but just occasionally can talk to one another.

Many children work hard to please their parents, but what I truly longed for was good times that were about us, not about me. That is the real hole the Dodgers filled in my life.

I don't really remember my folks singing to us, but they read to us.

I mostly want to be friends with my children.

Families need to have a time when they can cook together. They can eat at the table and you can look eye-to-eye. Phones are put away and there are no interruptions. And what you do is concentrate on each other. Listen to what they have to say, and let them listen to you.

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence.

I don't remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he'd make them up.

I had a great childhood, a very close-knit family. We were all overweight, and we had good times eating together, I imagine.

And I used to assemble the family to hear because I thought that they were so good that even from the point of view of enjoyment people shouldn't miss them, and I got every word of his that I could, and I could see by hard argument there was only the one way for it.

I have a very open line of communication with both my children.

My mother was a talker, but there are still so many things I want to ask her. She died when I was forty. But she did teach me to be a talker with my own children.

There are times everyone needs to be together for me and we all just work together; making sure that my energy is good and right when I go do what I'm going to do. That means the family needs to spend time together.

We sat down and told stories that happened to us in our childhood, to our children. They were all basically based on the truth. These stories were funny and poignant to us. They just took off. These are all stories from my life.

I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.

I used to listen to my dad a lot as a way of trying to be close to him, as well, because my parents were divorced and I didn't spend that much time with him. And I used to put headphones on and listen to my dad talk and sing and I found that quite... bonding with him, in a weird way.

It doesn't take money to turn off the television and cultivate real bonding time.

I want my son to never know the mommy who would rather watch him play basketball than play with him.