Anthony Doerr Quotes

I was never one of those little girls who played with baby dolls and picked names for her firstborn. I was playing in the mud with my dog, doing backflips, and climbing trees.

I've always been adventurous. In the summertime, my mom would lock me outside of the house and say, 'Do something, and come back later.'

When I was a kid, we played outside until we couldn't see and had to go in. I rode my bicycle and played tag football, kick the can, and hide-and-go-seek.

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

I was a typical American boy. I did a lot of outdoor activities, played a lot outside with my friends, loved to go the beach, liked to hike, boating and fishing, and I flew a lot of model airplanes as well.

When I was a kid, being outside was the norm. Rain or shine, our parents would tell us to get out of the house.

When I was in primary school, my best friend was a boy and we always goofed around, climbed trees, got holes in my trousers and muddied all my tops and things like that; a complete nightmare for the washing, but great fun.

I had a wild imagination as a kid - wild! - and I was outside all the time, swinging around in trees by myself.

We grew up climbing trees, playing outdoors and cycling.

As a child, I loved being outdoors. Our house had a railway track going past it. Of course, Mum told us not to go near it and, of course, we did. There were amazing blackberry bushes growing all along it, and we collected the fruit.

I was very physical as a child - we lived on a smallholding, and I was always outside making mud pies or building structures up trees.

I never liked dolls or played house. I read and wrote, climbed trees, collected rocks, rode my bike, and befriended boys, platonically.

If Luna Marie is at the park, my child is not happy unless she's on the highest bar of the jungle gym or the tallest branch of a tree or jumping over the biggest, deepest hole.

I grew up like Huck Finn, always outdoors, exploring, collecting frogs - there was space everywhere. I want my kids to experience that too. I love being outside.

I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television - there wasn't a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

In all honesty, I didn't love reading when I was a kid. I'd rather be running around in the woods or doing my best to scare the pants off all the children in the neighborhood by pretending my house was haunted or making them play Bloody Mary in the bathroom.

I was a very unpredictable child. I'd pack a bag and go off and do a hike in the mountains for 10 days.

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.

My first expedition was at about the age of eight.

I was really active as a kid. I was outdoors constantly.

I never grew up reading or fantasizing about fairy tales. I was always too busy, like, outside being a kid.

I remember living in a pretty small neighborhood where you could play in the streets and run around like crazy. My friends and I would ride our bikes around, but instead of just riding our bikes, we were solving crimes and going out in the woods to see what lay out there.

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