Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

I grew up barefoot, dirty, climbing trees. It made me appreciate things more.

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.

Growing up in the country, you're left to the wilds of your imagination.

People ask what message I have for kids, and it's simple: Just go outside.

When I grew up, we played in vacant lots.

I grew up like a lot of country boys and girls do - amongst the pine trees, dirt roads, farms, mules and people who were real.

My parents wanted me to grow up around horses and open spaces.

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

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

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.

I grew up on an apple orchard with a lot of surrounding wooded area, and I ran everywhere. I was outside all the time climbing trees.

One of the first houses we lived in was like out of a fairy story. We had a stream that ran through our garden, and we played with the ducks - we locked them in my mum's office, and they pooed everywhere. It was crazy, picking blackberries and mushrooms, rabbits running through your legs.

But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.

Growing up in a rural setting in Minnesota, I was raised with the outdoors and a sense of adventure.

I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.

I don't know how to not be outside since I was a little kid.

I think I spent my whole childhood diving out of haylofts with my BB gun and coming out shooting.

I grew up in the countryside, so I had quite a feral life up until the age of about fourteen.

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.

I rode my bike to school every day from age five to age fourteen. It was a small town - you could go anywhere.

I'm one of those people who happen to like trees. I don't know why - I just do. As a kid, I loved to climb them. The distant, upper branches, especially, were celestial and alluring.

I loved being outside. We'd hold lightning bugs in our fingers and pretend they were diamond rings.

I had a lovely, feral, free childhood - out and then come back when you're hungry or it gets too dark. I feel slightly cruel that I'm not offering my children the same.

I'm from Kansas, so there were a lot of vacant lots and open fields to tackle each other in so we could avoid tackling each other on the street. But running on the street and trying not to get taken down on the concrete, that will make you fast, that's for sure.

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.