Larry Ellison Quotes

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.

And I remember as a second or third grader having some autonomy to go to the store if I felt like it, walk home, take my time, kick the can. We were on our own schedule after school, so that was cool.

Back then, as a kid, you could really just do whatever you wanted until your parents got home.

I grew up in the Cayman Islands. I didn't play video games or watch TV. I would basically come home from school, throw down my backpack, grab my machete, and go hike and chop down trees to make a fort.

I grew up in an underprivileged home.

Running around when I was a kid was a really happy time; a time when getting home for dinner or for sleep were my only responsibilities.

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

More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past the time when you are called home for dinner, past the time of doing chores, past the time when your body betrays you past time itself.

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

The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.

I used to run around barefoot and climb trees and pick fruit and sell it on the side of the road like a real island girl.

Every weekend, I'm on the highway to Antwerp. I need to be there, to have the calm. It's a whole different life: I jump on my bike, and it's so small, I can be anywhere in a minute. I like to be at home when there's free time because when you're at a big company, you're constantly surrounded by 30 people.

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.

As kids, we played on the streets without shoes, and the game didn't stop for oncoming traffic.

When I think back to my childhood, I just think of the word 'freedom.' In the summers, we spent all day on the beach.

I grew up in New Jersey and played sports and rode my bike around. It was a really nice time - kids didn't have cellphones then - and you knew everyone in the town.

When I grew up, we played in vacant lots.

I had an idyllic childhood with the freedom to go and play.

People ask me, 'What is the mystique of the Texas songwriter?' Well, we ran barefoot from March until November. I think there's something about being a barefoot kid that gets you closer to the place - you take root.

When I was a little kid, me and all my family lived in a house the size of my daughter's room.

A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.

Me personally, I come from very, very humble beginnings - little, small town in Alabama, you know, staying at my granddaddy house. We really didn't have nothing.

When we were growing up we only got two pairs of shoes every year. With me, I was lucky because I got three pairs of shoes, the third were basketball shoes: Black Air Force Ones, White Air Force Ones, and boots for the winter.

It takes time--loose, unstructured dreamtime-- to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because we intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play.

Where I grew up, there were times when we didn't have anything to eat.