Jeff Nichols Quotes

When I was 15, I still liked climbing trees and hiding in cupboards.

My memories of being nine or ten years old are especially vivid, since this is the time when you have a real sense of who you are - before the self-conscious preteen years start.

As kids, we lived in this magical world and roamed free in the gardens. I was obsessed with 'Alice in Wonderland.' My dad cut the hedges so that they started shorter and grew taller, so I could run up and down and feel like I was shrinking.

Every western I did and will do; I will do it for the never ending young kid inside of me.

You know, it's kind of hard because I really - I see kids on their Rollerblades and their bikes, and just running around, climbing trees, and I used to do that. And I loved doing that.

When I was nine, I had this girlfriend and we used to have running races in the park. I wanted to be like Superman and fly in and rescue her.

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.

When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me.

To be honest, Peter Pan was one of those fairy tales that I sort of related to, and I think that's the case with a lot of kids. The whole idea of escapism really resonates with a lot of kids.

The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.

I'm still a kid inside, and adventure is adventure wherever you find it.

Inside every adult there's still a child that lingers. We're happiness merchants - giving people the opportunity to dream like children.

I don't ever want to grow up. That's boring.

When you're around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don't have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

It's such a potent thing, to be a kid. We grow up, and we don't want to remember how everything is so beautiful and terrifying when we're young. The older you get, the more you hope to muffle things.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

Persona-wise, I represent a lot of people's childhoods.

I remember, being young is a scary, wonderful feeling.

There was a lot of beauty in my childhoood.

I loved everything about being ten, eleven, and twelve years old, and seem to make most of my heroines and heroes that age so I can reexperience all those pitfalls and wonderful discoveries. It helps me to figure out my own life when I write from that eleven year old place!

'In Ear Park' perfectly encapsulates the beauty of youth for me.

I think being a kid is a wonderful thing, and I don't want to speed up that process any more.

Childhood, at its best, is a perpetual adventure, in the truest sense of that overtaxed word: a setting forth into trackless lands that might have come to existence the instant before you first laid eyes on them.

As a little kid, I climbed a lot of trees because I always loved the bird's-eye view.