Mary Pope Osborne Quotes

When we were kids, our parents would let us play outside all day, and there was a horse-drawn milk wagon that could become anything in my mind, like a spaceship or something.

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.

As a kid, I used to run around our garden waving a stick and pretending to be a million different people. That's why I became an actor, really.

A young imagination is bold, likes to make bigger leaps. It likes to, well, imagine that the dustbuster is a dinosaur; that the computer mouse is a hotrod; that the box is a cave; that the rawhide is a torch... or a baton... or something.

In all honesty, I didn't love reading when I was a kid. I'd rather be running around in the woods or doing my best to scare the pants off all the children in the neighborhood by pretending my house was haunted or making them play Bloody Mary in the bathroom.

Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'

As a child, I was always playing some generic child.

I did spend a lot of my childhood playing out movie scenarios in my head. I'd walk along the road, pretending like I was in the army, talking on the radio, and doing maneuvers. I dreamt a lot about performing in movies and living in fantasies.

I grew up in the late '70s. We played outside all day. I think that's where I got the whole notion of being an actor, you know, stunt fighting with my friends.

I would come home and re-create every movie. Our backyard became a battleship, a war zone, a western town.

When I was a child, one of my first games was a time machine which I made for my brother - a big box covered in silver and bits of cellophane. I'd close him up in it and joggle him and say, 'We're in Victorian times now... and now we're in Egyptian times, and I can see all these pyramids and pharaohs.'

I used to go outside every day and invent these elaborate worlds and scenarios in my head, and when I grew too old for playing pretend, I started to write everything down instead.

Sendak's 1963 classic 'Where The Wild Things Are' has long been a favorite of mine because of the creative imagery, fantastic adventures and, most of all, because of how this timeless story shows us that children need to be free to roam, explore and invent in order to understand their place in the world that surrounds them.

I didn't play or like a lot of board games as a child. I liked playing with my G.I. Joes and making up adventures for them.

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.'

Growing up, my mom made us this amazing thing called The Mack Theatrical Wardrobe. It was a massive trunk filled with everything that you'd want as a kid if you were into imagination and play.

I am always fascinated by the way kids create their own world. That is something I am very attentive to anywhere I go.

Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.

If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.

To a child, often the box a toy came in is more appealing than the toy itself.

There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and books: being able to write about things I wouldn't normally write about, like a disappointing pancake, or monsters or opposite day is really different than writing about heartbreak and relationships.

I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me.

That's another thing, we made up games. We didn't have equipment. When it snowed, we would play slow motion tackle football. We would play hockey, but we wouldn't skate. We just made things up. I loved doing that.

When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.

Pretend was a big part of my childhood.