David McCullough Quotes

The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second.

Over at our place, we’re sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children. But just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget.

Even as a child back in Indiana, whenever I took a Butterbelly off the hook I used to ask myself, "Does this fish think?" I would even ask others, "Do you suppose this Butterbelly can think?" And all I would get in reply was a look. At the age of eighteen, I left the state.

When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you'll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone's arms, as a story was spun around you like a web.

I believe nostalgia has many appearances and that it's not just the privilege of adults. I think children too can have nostalgia. It's one of mankind's most shared emotions. It's one of the things that makes us human. When you live, you lose things. It's a fact of life. So it's natural for everyone to have nostalgia.

It is in our nature to travel into our past, hoping thereby to illuminate the darkness that bedevils the present.

Well, when I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten year old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old... I think! And I always wanted to be a certain, a bit similar to that. But I didn't want to sell pizza.

It has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement- I knew when I was a kid.

I think some people are really connected to who they were as children. And some people aren't.

One of my favorite stories growing up was A Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book. I still remember the image, so strongly, of all the kids coming out of their house at the same time, they're all bouncing a ball at the same time, and they all go back in at the same time. A Wrinkle in Time moved me deeply.

I don't know whether I could visit a new neighborhood now and have a kid's set of observations about a place. I no longer can really think like a child, though I can remember thinking like one.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

At 68 I'm every age I ever was. I always think of that. I'm not just 68. I'm also 55 and 21 and three. Oh especially three.

I distinctly remember watching Annie when I was very little and thinking 'I don't like this kid.' In fact I think I remember thinking 'I don't like any of these kids.' That's all I remember.

When I was a kid there was a show called 'Holmes & Yo-Yo' about a robot cop. I LOVED that show and I think it only lasted like three episodes.

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack.

What I notice is that every adult or child I give a new set of Crayolas to goes a little funny. The kids smile, get a glazed look on their faces, pour the crayons out, and just look at them for a while....The adults always get the most wonderful kind of sheepish smile on their faces--a mixture of delight and nostalgia and silliness. And they immediately start telling you about all their experiences with Crayolas.

We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana-seat bikes and minibikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living-room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and signed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. We will never be that way, we said, we will never say those things.

When I was a young kid, almost every other show on television was a Western. And some of them were part of my childhood, I loved them. Like, Rifle Man, I absolutely adored. So, I think everything comes in a cycle.

It's just people who grew up in that time are suddenly old enough to be creators themselves, but I think they have a little perspective. I'm 40 now, and I have children of my own. Before I forget my own childhood completely, I want to take some time to take a look at the '80s and think back.

The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.

Men... look back on the children who were once themselves, and attempt to reconstruct them. But they can no longer think like the child.

People seem to forget what it was like to be a child. I think it's partly because they want to forget, because it usually wasn't as good as you thought it was, and so you want to skip over those things, and not have to relate to that anymore.