Richard Dawkins Quotes

The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.

I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.

After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.

Pictures are very important. I remember at home we had illustrated editions of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and 'The Jungle Book,' which were read to me. Living in Zimbabwe made it very real, especially the 'Just So Stories' with the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo.'

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and notebooks.

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.

One of my favorite books is 'Armadillo Rodeo', and I got the idea from traveling to Texas and seeing armadillos.

Saving the world via medical research or going off to Gobi Desert to dust off dinosaur eggs is what I thought I might be doing when I was a kid, and I'd love to bring those interests to a show like 'E.R.' or 'The West Wing,' or a movie like 'Jurassic Park.'

I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

While growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I dreamed of becoming many things: an archaeologist, an ambassador, an actor, an author.

I have always loved 'Stig of the Dump.' I think reading that book made me officially realise that I was a reader.

As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.

As I listened, it occurred to me that interest in and affection for the animals that share the planet with us may be a more unifying force than any other.

I'm a big fan of 'National Geographic', the magazine and the channel. Anything to do with the natural world. For years, when I was younger, I was convinced I would be a nature photographer, but that didn't pan out.

I was so inspired by Beverly Cleary's funny and wonderful books.

Even as a child, I had walked down streets reading novels, waiting for my feet to get stuck in tar as I crossed the road, like the absent-minded animal in a Richard Scarry kid's book.

All my big heroes are literary, writers.

I found that Steve's passion for wildlife and willingness to lay his life on the line so exciting.

I loved going to superhero films growing up - you come home, and you pretend to be those people, and it ends up informing much of what you aspire to be. And that's what I will say is important about the genre.

In our imaginations we can go anywhere. Travel with me to Redwall in Mossflower country.

Reading is where the wild things are.

Christopher Robin was sitting outside his door, putting on his Big Boots. As soon as he saw the Big Boots, Pooh knew that an Adventure was going to happen, and he brushed the honey off his nose with the back of his paw, and spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look ready for Anything.

What I really wanted was to travel and see all the different animals that were on the verge of extinction.