James Nesbitt Quotes

There's a thing I think children realise at a certain age, which is that if their parents say, 'Don't do it', and they go ahead and do it, they're still not going to die. And I think that's what it is: that no matter what you do, you're not going to die.

One of the most startling events in my life was when my older son was about 16, and he blamed me for all the troubles of the world. So I, I felt like telling him, 'Oh no, I was just like you when I was your age; I wanted to change the world, too.'

In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood.

Every parent knows this moment in a child's age when he or she needs your attention in a very specific way because it's the beginning and ending of the early life of imagination. It's such a responsibility.

The kids are old enough now - I just want to let them be kids. I don't want to comment on them too much. They're at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

I can see why people keep having babies. We were looking at a school for my youngest this morning, and there were all these little boys and girls. So sweet. And then the teenagers walk past, and, my God, they're enormous, and I bet they don't kiss their mummies. I'm just going to force my children to remain lovely.

One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another.

Though energy and inspiration diminish, experience grows - the theme of parents and kids, for instance.

Iknew that all the attributes he was teased for, at age five, were going to work in his favor by thetime he was thirty-five...but I couldn't get him there overnight. You can't fast-forward your child'slife, no matter how much you want to.

There are great parents of small children - they keep their little hair in bows - but those parents are not always good parents of young adults. As soon as their children get up to some size, it's "Shut up, sit down, you talk too much, keep your distance, I'll send you to Europe!" My mom was a terrible parent of small children but a great parent of young adults. She'd talk to me as if I had some sense.

Good parents have children who do terrible things and vice-versa.

But from the perspective of the aging parent, there is no major difference between four and fifteen, except that when your child is four, his motoring privileges are restricted to little toy Fisher-Price vehicles which are unlikely (although I would not totally rule it out in America) to sue you.

To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the masterworks and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople: to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories.

There are responsibilities which are parental responsibilities and those are the types of things we prepare the next generation for, but no one tells you how to answer the kids' questions in the backseat of the car when they want to know what the world is for or where they came from or why any of this is happening.

I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them. Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.

Children learn about the nature of the world from their family. They learn about power and about justice, about peace and about compassion within the family. Whether we oppress or liberate our children in our relationships with them will determine whether they grow up to oppress and be oppressed or to liberate and be liberated.

You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that wasn't made for them by navigating a playground that was.

Raising a child is like taking care of someone who's on way too many shrooms, while you yourself are on a moderate amount of shrooms. I am not confident in my decisions, but I know you should not be eating a mousepad.

I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.

Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best.

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.

There are children born to be children, and others who must mark time till they can take their natural places as adults.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

In just a few minutes, my son will have completed his first trip around the sun.