Brad D. Smith Quotes

I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s.

My hometown I grew up in in Michigan is really tiny, and they are so excited for all of my adventures my whole life.

I grew up around the corner from my grandparents' dairy farm, which was three miles outside of a small town called Phoenix.

I was raised on a farm in Kansas where we lived next door to my Grandma Dew, and I was her shadow. We went everywhere together - to the bank, the doctor, the Early Bird Garden Club, and to an endless procession of Church meetings.

I'm from northern Virginia, but I grew up next to the West Virginia border, so it was hills and farmland. We had that sense of adventure you get from growing up around old farmhouses and lazy, rolling hills, you know?

When I was growing up, we had a bungalow in New Jersey which we visited in the summers. Everybody in that small community was named Feldman and was either an aunt or cousin of mine. I just found it comfortable to use the name Feldman.

I grew up in Wahpeton, N.D., and I didn't leave until I was 18, and I've kept going back.

I did grow up in a small town. I grew up in a lot of different places. But I consider my home to be Cleveland.

My neighborhood was normal. I had a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. Typical American upbringing. Sometimes we got into trouble, but everyone watched after each other, so if my parents didn't see me making trouble, another family would tell them.

I grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with my parents and sisters, but my family would drive every weekend to Hammonton, where both my grandparents lived and where my parents were raised.

My grandmother Dora taught me how to cook. She's from a small town in West Virginia called Milton. I would pull a stool up to her kitchen counter after school. My love of food started there.

I grew up in Bristol, R.I. I had grandparents and great-grandparents nearby, and because I was the only grandchild until I was 12, I was the center of a lot of adult attention.

I grew up in a small town in West Virginia, and most of my family lived in our neighborhood or very close by. I had my grandparents down the street, my great-grandmother next door, and my great-aunt and great-uncle one door down.

When I was a boy I was my father.

She’s really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged to see the frosted cakes in the bakery window. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.

Growing up at my grandmother's table, she always had rice. She might do something as exotic as potatoes or spaghetti, but there was still always rice, just in case you needed a little rice fix.

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

That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them

You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories.

Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came -- where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.

Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side.

I think it's good that [my granddaughter] here because I lost my parents and now it's great that there's a new generation. And she's taught me new things that I've forgotten. Like, when you're on holiday and see what it's like to see a shell or go into the water for the first time.

Can you stop your mother from singing to you? Who would do such a thing?

I was always around people who were in the business from the time I was an absolute baby. I grew up in New York City, and my parents, my sister, and I had a house on Fire Island, and they were part of a set of people that were all close and friendly, most of whom were involved in show business in one regard or another. So it was always familiar to me, and I kind of enjoyed it.