James Payn Quotes

You can't be too careful what you tell a child because you never know what he'll take hold of and spend the rest of his life remembering you by.

I was actually born in New York. We lived there until I was three so I grew up watching Sesame Street and hearing the accent. You are a sponge at that age, soaking everything up.

I was raised, I feel like, on television, definitely a child of TV, and was always fascinated by storytelling.

Just as the child is father to the man, so the impressions of one's youth remain the most vivid in manhood.

I read the 'New Yorker' when I was a kid. I used to love the cartoons and pick the cartoons out of the library, so I felt I knew the world of their cartoons.

You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.

They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.

I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.

I can't divorce myself from my childhood. I try to write as much fiction as I possibly can, but there are so many things that are touchstones of my childhood like being on the swim team and playing soccer and the particularities of sports season and environments that make their way into my books.

I think being raised spending so much time outdoors was really important - while you're in it, you might not know, but now I think of the things I was thankful for.

My formative years were in Jersey and I'm kind of Jersey at heart.

The background of any artist is shaped by the first 15 years of his or her life.

The things you encounter in your formative years always stay with you.

Seeing 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I'd ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me.

The difference between a childhood and a boyhood must be this: our childhood is what we alone have had; our boyhood is what any boy in our environment would have had.

You have a set of skills, a way of looking at the world, and often in childhood it was revealed to you by things that you were just kind of naturally drawn to.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

I know that I loved music before I loved movies, simply because I didn't see movies as a kid.

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

I don't have any tattoos but I've thought about getting Ernie, from Bert and Ernie, on my earlobe. He made a big impression on me as a kid. And I have pretty big earlobes.

Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe.

I never aspire to be objective because I don't believe in objectivity. It's important to be truthful, and it's important to make sure that the audience has a solid sense of what the expectation should be of a particular film.

"This - is now my way - where is yours"? Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way". For the way - it does not exist!

I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.

Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,' wailed Anne. 'You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is.