Peter Sis Quotes

'Black Beauty,' by Anna Sewell, remains a star-dusted memory because my mom read it aloud to my sister and me at night for months. I was no more than 7.

My father gave me Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' when I was in junior high; my junior high, angst-filled soul responded to that.

I read 'the Hobbit' at the age when you're supposed to read it. I didn't read 'The Lord Of The Rings.' My father, who was an English teacher, advised me that once I had read 'the Hobbit,' that would be enough. I could then move on to Dostoyevsky.

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.

The first time I remember really being excited about a book was 'The Count of Monte Cristo.'

I remember being about eight and watching 'Pollyanna' with Hayley Mills. I looked at my mum and said, 'Mum, I want to be Pollyanna.' She said, 'You're going to have to make yourself cry if you want to be an actress.' So I turned my head away, and when I turned it back I was in floods of tears.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.'

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.

When I was little, when I was a toddler or something, I would watch 'Jason's Lyrica' lot.

I was about 12 when I first encountered 'The Moonstone' - or a Classics Illustrated version of it - digging through an old trunk in my grandfather's house on a rainy Bengali afternoon.

There is a lot of my childhood in 'The Sandcastle Girls.'

The first sort of big present I remember getting from Santa Claus was quite a small telescope that I remember going into our backyard with my parents and figuring out how to assemble, and staring at the night sky, just for hours, with both of my parents.

When I was a kid, I loved 'Little Women.'

'Island of the Blue Dolphins' by Scott O'Dell had a huge impact on me.

One of my clearest, happiest memories is of myself at fourteen, sitting up in bed, being handed a large glass of warm buttermilk by my mother because I had a sore throat, and she saying how envious she was that I was reading 'The Catcher in the Rye' for the first time.

I was 7 years old and my dad gave me a wooden tennis racket.

When I was a kid, my aunt snuck us into see 'Boyz n the Hood.'

I grew up watching 'Gigi.' My grandmother had it, and I watched it there.

I was three years old. I had a go-kart that my dad had on a leash so I would not go too quick.

My mom gave me 'Anne of Green Gables' as a present so that was my first introduction to Anne, little did I know.

I remember I had a copy of 'David Copperfield' that I lugged around at primary school. I started reading it when I was seven, and I was eight when I finished it. I read an awful lot as a little girl and played games and imagined lots of things.

Watching Eagles games with my dad, whether at the vet or in our house, was a big part of my childhood.

Shakespeare is as naturally a part of American culture as it is the British culture; the Americans have a natural interest in their heritage.

I lived in L.A. for a year when I was four - my dad was doing a sabbatical at UCLA - so it always remained quite a familiar place.

My earliest memory is trying to read Beatrix Potter, and the words were literally jumping off the page.