Kevin Kwan Quotes

My mom used to call us 'free range kids,' like free range chickens... We roamed the countryside.

What I remember the most really was just running wild there. Barefooted, swimming in dirty lakes, selling fruit, picking mango trees, hoping not to get caught because they don't take kindly to thieves in Africa.

I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.

I think back to my childhood, and I remember running around as a kid. We were all running around then. It wasn't about getting into shape. It's just what we did.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.

Maybe we adults idealize our own red-rover days, the hot afternoons spent playing games that required no coaches, eating foods that involved no nutrition, getting dirty in whole new ways and rarely glancing in the direction of a screen of any kind.

As a kid, I was just led out in the morning to go spend my day with my friends and just run in the woods. And I'd only come home to eat or when I was thirsty.

My mother and I lived in an apartment complex in a neighborhood. So there was a gaggle of kids. Every day after school, we'd just meet up in a field, and some game would be chosen, Wiffle ball or tag, and you'd play that until the streetlights came on.

Mom would say, 'Get out of the house,' and we would just go. We had all sorts of large swings and flying foxes and various death traps throughout the forest that we'd try and do our best to hurt ourselves on. It was a great childhood in terms of being creative, I think.

As kids, we played on the streets without shoes, and the game didn't stop for oncoming traffic.

When I think back to my childhood, I just think of the word 'freedom.' In the summers, we spent all day on the beach.

I remember I'd be playing in the streets with friends, sometimes barefooted. I'd come home with sore feet, but wanting to do the same the day after. That passion made us keep playing. Playing in the dirt was our daily joy.

I think that a lot of people will agree that Donegal is the countryside, it's trees and fields, but especially when you're a kid you can make so much out of that.

I wish we could get back to those days, just let kids go and play and enjoy themselves on the streets instead of at academies too young.

My parents would tell us to go outside and play or to do creative stuff, but television was very limited. So we used our own creativity to entertain ourselves. We were out in the woods a lot making huts and playing horses.

I think outdoors has been my second home. My parents wouldn't be like, "Go and do a puzzle," they'd be like, "Hey, there's a forest across the street. You need to go play in it."

If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.

Where once my careless childhood strayed, / A stranger yet to pain.

What happens when all the parts of childhood are soldered down, when the young no longer have the time or space to play in their family's garden, cycle home in the dark with the stars and moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblees quivering on harp wires? What then?

I'm a dirty kid, I like to be outside, I like to run about, I like to get messy. So I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, skating and just being a disaster.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be.

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

Wading River was a gorgeous place to grow up and I feel very lucky there was a wood by our house where I could go explore when I was a kid.

The first time I did everything was in Paisley - the first time I went to the pictures or the bowling or the ice rink or the swimming baths.

I grew up in New Jersey and played sports and rode my bike around. It was a really nice time - kids didn't have cellphones then - and you knew everyone in the town.