Charlotte Rae Quotes

My dad tells me that he took us to a pantomime when I was very, very small - panto being a sort of English phenomenon. There's traditionally a part of the show where they'll invite kids up on the stage to interact with the show. I was too young to remember this, but my dad says that I was running up onstage before they even asked us.

I was thrilled one year when I was younger when not only did my brothers get hockey sticks for Christmas - but I did too!

When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta bechamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce.

I've taken my boys to the house I grew up in. Taken them to the site of Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers used to play. They go to all the Dodger games, and they play Little League ball. I have infused them with New York spirit.

I was dictating to my mother when I was 5.

I've been hearing fiddle music since I was in the womb, I'm sure.

I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well.

I can jump on to a kitchen worktop from standing, like Tigger. It was something my dad could do, and I copied it from him.

I pretty much borrow my entire beauty regime from my mom.

I don't remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he'd make them up.

My mother made soft polenta often, and as a child, I would watch her stir until she looked like her arm would fall off.

Reading was a huge part of my life as a child - we were a family of storytellers.

Sometimes I get ideas from childhood. In 'The Hat', Hedgie starts getting teased about his hat, and he just pretends that everything is okay. That's the advice that my mother gave me - not to get mad and pretend that everything is okay. And it worked.

My grandmother taught me to knit, and as I knit, my mind returns to my childhood.

I developed my taste for coffee at five, staying with my grandmother in Connecticut.

My father had the bug. Ever since I can remember walking, he was waking me up at 5 in the morning to go to flea markets. As a kid, I couldn't really stand it, but as I grew up, I became that guy, and when I have kids, I am going to be doing the same thing.

My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.

One thing I always make - and I'm sure this is partly to do with memory and yearning and because I've made it ever since my children were born - I make gingerbread every year. And it's partly just the perfume of the spices in the house, makes it smell like winter to me.

I've been my mom's kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

Me and my dad, we'd go to the dirt bike races every year. I mean we'd go probably too much every year. And he would make me listen to all country music.

I got a motorbike at three; we've still got it. It was an R50. Hopefully my little nephews will play on it.

When I was a kid, we'd go crabbing, as a lot of folks do on the East Coast, and we'd catch some fresh crabs and take it home, and Mom would turn it into this unbelievable crab gravy - or, as they say, sauce.

As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom.

Waffle House is my childhood thing. We used to go there on Sundays or weekends every now and then with my family. It's just good, Southern, home-cooked food, and that's what I love.

My father didn't watch football, and it was my grandad who got me in to it.