Neighborhood Play Quotes

When I was about five my dad built a stage for me in our basement. A full stage, with a curtain, a backdrop and a dressing room. There were three colored spotlights - a red one, a white one, and a blue one. Blue was for nighttime scenes, and red was for when we were in hell. If the neighborhood kids wanted to use the stage, they had to incorporate me into the play.

It's easier to go outside and play basketball. You can shoot around by yourself. Play pick-up. Whereas with baseball, no one likes putting a ball on a tee, hitting it, chasing it and putting it back on a tee. You need more than a few guys. So I was always in the neighborhood playing basketball with my friends.

Johnny, can't you come out to play in your empty garden?

I grew up playing with boys in the yard and my brother in the backyard and boys in the schoolyard.

In the early '50s, my great-grandmother and grandfather raised a baby gorilla named Bobo who wore clothes and played with the neighborhood kids.

I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It's what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do.

When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits.

I grew up at a time in Singapore - the '70s and '80s - where it was still possible to go riding around the island barefoot. And I was one of these kids that was just climbing trees and running around the neighbourhood.