Caroll Spinney Quotes

Big Bird was the biggest star, I mean, children's favorite for a number of years. I have a 22-year-old granddaughter whose first words were 'Big Bird.'

I've learned to say, 'I'm a friend of Big Bird. He even taught me how to sound like him.'

When he first started - Jim Henson, who created Bid Bird and Oscar - he said Big Bird was just a big, goofy guy. And it was - a script came along and I said, 'I think Big Bird would be much more useful to the show if he were a child learning all the things we were teaching in the show.' And so he didn't know the alphabet, even, for instance.

Jim Henson was the only piece of fan mail I ever wrote when I was a little kid.

Godzilla. The big, green G-man has had a profound influence on my creative endeavors and imagination since I was blueberry-avoiding kid.

I really learned the power of the tube on Sesame Street and how it can influence a very young mind.

We were only allowed to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers and 3-2-1 Contact!

I was a TV junkie as a kid. I am the Sesame Street generation.

No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.

I grew up watching Mickey Mouse and going to Disney World, like, 2,000 times. Mickey Mouse is like my guru.

I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that would have pleased him.

I learned my ABCs, 1-2-3 from 'Sesame Street.'

I always say I owe my sense of humor to 'The Muppets' because I didn't necessarily know what was going on when I watched 'The Muppet Show,' and obviously, 'Sesame Street' was made just for me.

When I was 9, I saw 'Star Wars,' and it set me on a path to where I am today.

When I was ten, I spent a school holiday watching a lot of films: 'Dead Poets Society', 'Stand By Me', 'Home Alone' and 'The Goonies'. It completely inspired me. I told my parents I wanted to become an actor after that.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

Ray Harryhausen's 'Sinbad' picture was the first film I remember seeing. I was two years old when it came out, and it changed my life forever. I had nightmares about dragons and stuff for years - and loved it!

I wrote my first story when I was six or seven.

I walked the streets of New York; I would feel the presence of Daredevil. I would see him up on the rooftop. What you are doing in your life, you start to see in your book. It all starts to merge together.

After 'Sesame Street,' it's a hyper-familiar world to me and I have this childlike ability to ignore the fact that I'm talking to scraps of cloth. Every country I go to, I see posters promoting the film in different languages. 'Los Muppets' - I love that!

I've always been drawn to writing for young readers. The books that I read growing up remain in my mind very strongly.

I could do a thousand documentaries on poverty and poor people that would be watched by a handful of the convinced, but I was never really going to have an influence on my times -- (as I might if I develop Sesame Street).

I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old.

I remember watching 'Sesame Street' as a kid and loving that there were Latino characters on there.

Most of my characters are an amalgamation of people that I've met, my family, or myself. Being a writer, you can draw only from what you know. I am lucky to have really rich and interesting people in my family for, you know, interesting family nights and great characters.