Gary Oldman Quotes

I had a lot of alone time with no brothers or sisters running around, or anything. I would just sit and imagine things, all the time.

I lived in a neighborhood where there weren't many kids. I had a couple sisters, but I was very much a loner. Whatever film I had seen that day or that week, I would completely find myself in that world.

I read a lot growing up. It was kind of my comfort, you know; I loved it. I love story. I love narrative. I was academic. I wasn't particularly athletic. I didn't make the drill team. I didn't go out for sports.

I had a strong propensity, which I still have, to be invisible. In grade school, I'd try to disappear and become formless. I lived in a very imaginary world. I loved poetry and wrote my first novel when I was 9. It was about a little girl and the people she met in the woods.

I was a shy, quiet kid. I was happiest playing by myself with my toys, rather than hanging around people.

Storybooks were always a big part of my imagination, and my childhood and adolescence.

I was a shy little girl. Growing up, I was often content being alone in my room, making up stories, and acting out all the parts. I became so good at it that, with the door closed, my parents thought I had friends over.

I was an imaginative kid. My sister needed entertaining, whereas I was the one under the table playing with a bit of fluff on the carpet. I was the sort of child who would spend time rolling up balls of all different kinds of fluff and that would be my little family.

I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there... I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination of America and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity... Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.

I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.

Because some of my at-home life was rough and lonely, I often looked to escape into my imagination. Science fiction provided a deep well to pull from and was something easily accessible to me.

He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone.

While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.

I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.

I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who know me go, 'Oh yeah, Mailman, she's gone into her cave again.' I'm like that, a bit of a hibernating bear. Like that crocodile that just sits there in the water and doesn't do much. I was always a bit of a dreamer as a kid, so that hasn't changed.

As a kid, I spent an awful lot of time pretending I was somebody else. I think growing up in the 1980s wasn't very exciting so you kind of create this secret life of an alternate person. You pretend to be whatever you need to be that day, so you live in that dream world.

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.

The magic of Disneyland, walking through the tunnel underneath the train station to Main Street, it just transports you to other places and other times.

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.

Being on 'The Vampire Diaries' feels almost like a game you play when you're a kid. When I was a kid, I used to have to take the garbage out at night on Wednesdays. I lived out in the country. I'd take the garbage out, and I used to pretend that I was the only person in the whole world, except for one other person, and he was looking for me.

I love to fantasize still, as I did as a little boy. If I see a movie, I want to fantasize about what it's all about.

Honestly, I think I was in kindergarten. I remember seeing a play and realizing that was what I wanted to do. I remember always wanting to retreat to my room or somewhere private to play pretend by myself.

I played a lot of dress-up in my room. I really liked being alone. I had a lot of friends, but I had an only-child, live-in-my-head personality.