Olds Quotes & Sayings

I was recruited to teach 9-year-olds. I taught for two years. — Sting

There is something beginning to be wrong with the mortals, a certain lack of interest and ability. The birth rate has plummeted all over the world. There are millions of inner children and fewer and fewer real ones. I remember seeing a holo feature on a certain famous amusement park: roller coasters and merry-go-rounds packed with forty-year-olds clutching the wonder of childhood to themselves like harpies, and not one little face in the crowd. Neverland has been invaded by the grownups, no children allowed. It's better than having lots of real kids starving in gutters, at least. Mind — Kage Baker

When I was 5 and playing against 11-year-olds, who were bigger, stronger, faster, I just had to figure out a way to play with them. — Wayne Gretzky

Innovation doesn't come from the big company. It never has and never will. Innovation is something new that looks crazy at first glance. It comes from the 19-year-olds and the start-ups that no one's heard of. — Marc Andreessen

When I was 13, Eddie Murphy was to me what Chris Tucker was to 13-year-olds when I made 'Rush Hour.' And 'Rush Hour' really came out of the fact that I grew up watching 'Beverly Hills Cop' and '48 Hrs.' — Brett Ratner

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive. — Thomas Sowell

Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. — Haruki Murakami

Saint Bo, a man christened with the miraculous ability to gentle horses, nervous women, and one year olds. — Becky Wade

I had been very focused on the issue of education disparities in our country, and literally, by the time kids are just nine years old, in low-income communities, they're already three or four grade levels behind nine-year-olds in high-income communities. — Wendy Kopp

I love being around kids. I couldn't figure out why all these 70-year-olds wanted to hang out with me when I was 27. Now I understand, and I'm trying to steal their energy from them like they stole from me at the time. — Stanley Druckenmiller

Many folks have asked me, 'How do you do it and why have you sacrificed so much to do this work?' The answer comes easy. I look at my daughter and find hope in that she is living in a world of struggle, of social and political movement. She and the other five-year-olds will grow up in a more just, more equitable world. She motivates me. — Lateefah Simon

each year India produces thousands upon thousands of eighteen-year olds who have little to no instructed idea of the last sixty years of Indian history. They have no idea if or how those five-year plans worked. They have no idea if or how the Non-Aligned Movement worked. They have no idea about the numerous wars India has fought against Pakistan or China. They have no idea, for instance, of what many people call the greatest threat to India's internal security: the Naxal movement. What created this Naxal movement? And why is the movement popular where it is? Our youth doesn't know. — Sidin Vadukut

I'm sorry for Cathleen. She can be ... difficult.
Two-year-olds were difficult. That woman was a terrorist. — Jenny B. Jones

Did you see them? They're kids, Nathan. Children, who ended up being in the wrong place, at the wrong time." I blew out a frustrated breath, tracking one of the angry young teens in topic as he was dragged kicking and yelling from the room. "They won't even consider switching sides. Plumber has them so scared, all they can see if the numbers advantage he has over us."
"Numbers don't mean shit when you're fighters have the same level of skill as a two year old." He sniffed, shaking his head at the kid who was finally pulled from the room. "And that's insulting to two year olds. — Violet Cross

And anyway, the truth isn't all that great. I mean, what's the truth? Planes falling out of the sky. Buses blowing up and ripping little kids into millions of pieces. Twelve-year-olds raping people and then shooting them in the head so they can't tell. I can't watch the news anymore or look at the papers. It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and makes everything crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date. — Michael Thomas Ford

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? — Sharon Olds

Show me the science. Last I heard, gay six-year-olds remain unproven. — Vernon D. Burns

I think that all of us are 5-year-olds and we don't want to be embarrassed in the schoolyard. I've gone through things in my life. People say it must be so hard to do it in the public eye, but the truth is, when you go through hard things, it's just hard. — Helen Hunt

that we would receive the overwhelming message that the vast majority of adults feel they have no talent in these areas. On the other hand, if we were to conduct the same poll among 4-year-olds, we would find that virtually all of them are convinced they can sing, and virtually all of them have confidence in their ability to dance. Most of the 4-year-olds have little or no real talent, but, instead, they are endowed with incredible confidence in their own potential. This confidence, or certainty of success, is something we were all born with but we later traded in for a strong dose of what we call realism. Shortly after we reach school age, we are taught lessons about the world that revolve around us, limiting our vision and becoming realistic. — Jim Stovall

Twelve-year-olds are eager to turn everything into arguments but don't have the cognitive skills to win them. — Linda Perlstein

Because six-year-olds don't have real interests aside from double Dutch and Pizza Lunchables. — Katie Heaney

I don't think that we have to look like the models in the magazines because they are 19 year olds and they have been photo shopped extensively, not but given what I, we have as the raw material, take care of it. — Isabel Allende

THE NOTE said the first clue was "in the big one." I looked at the jumble of letters that followed, and I saw no pattern. Not such a surprise, since I was missing the puzzle chromosome and couldn't do puzzles designed for nine-year-olds. — Janet Evanovich

Incredibly, while these 18 to 20 year-olds cannot legally buy a beer, cannot purchase a bottle of wine and cannot order a drink in a bar, right now they can walk into any gun shop, any pawn shop, any gun show, anywhere in America and buy a handgun. — Al Gore

I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds gliding past on Vespas with crinkly, long, hair, and I thought I was on the set of a movie. I couldn't believe that this was going on and I hadn't known about it before. I was flabbergasted. — Walter Kirn

A lot of people talk to kids like they're idiots. When I'm telling my two-year-old that you don't throw a dish on the floor, I explain it as if they're a 25-year-old that hasn't quite figured it out yet. — David Walton

You expect two-year olds to wear diapers and make a mess with just about everything they touch. We have to allow the young in Christ to be immature, and yes, make messes. Young and immature prophetic people will act like young and immature prophetic people. The belief that some have tried to impose on the prophetic - that if you made one mistake you are a false prophet - inhibits their maturity, or worse, it can profoundly distort their character. — Rick Joyner

It's so easy for 16-year-olds, including myself, to say, 'I just wish I were an adult.' But we can't wish our lives away. When we're adults, we'll say, 'I wish I were 16 again.' — Bindi Irwin

The anesthetizing against caring really threw me for a loop. I was seeing it with 15-year-olds. It was how they were starting their intimate lives. It alarmed me. — Peggy Orenstein

I have immense respect for teachers who know what they're doing. I feel like I'm just winging it most of the time, and a pack of wild twelve-year-olds will see my weakness and tear me to shreds. — April White

Financial hydrogen bombs built on personal computers by 26-year-olds with MBAs. — Felix Rohatyn

It's just that the nature of being a director is being incredibly overwhelmed with getting the shots right, dealing with the locations, and then there's a two-year-old in the scene, and all that stuff - you know, there's a lot of kids in scenes ... — Jay Duplass

It got more exciting with each war. I mean the planes were going faster than hell when I was flying a Mustang, but by the time I got to Nam, it scared the piss out of a lot of guys just to fly the damn jets at full speed. Let alone do it in combat. — Robin Olds

3:12 pm
Secretly, I admit, I find many of my classmates annoying. I've often thought to myself, 'Good grief, these people are five-year-olds. Why must I spend my days among them?' But have I ever said such things aloud? No. I have been nothing but generous to them, and kept these thoughts to myself.
And how have they repaid me? Have they been grateful or kind? Ho NO! — Jaclyn Moriarty

Eleven-year-olds are supposed to be unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like "boof-boof" - just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible - except when we choose not to be. — Alan Bradley

Three-year-olds have no control over their lives. If you don't want your kids competing in pageants, you hold the power, not them. I sincerely doubt a six-year-old would hitchhike to the banquet room at the Sheraton and compete in the Little Miss Shaker Heights pageant herself if her emotionally damaged Mommy wasn't pushing her. — Adam Carolla

I may not be funny. I may not be a singer. I may not be a damn seamstress. I may have diabetes. I may have really bad vision. I may have one leg. I may not know how to read. I may not know who the vice president is. I may technically be an alien of the state. I may have a Zune. I may not know Excel. I may be two 9 year olds in a trench coat. I may not have full control of my bowels. I may drive a '94 Honda Civic. I may not "get" cameras. I may dye my hair with Hydrogen Peroxide. I may be afraid of trees. I may be on fire right now. But I'm a fierce queen. — Justin Johnson

In my opinion, kids need their parents more in their teens than when they were younger, and that's exactly the time parents think their jobs are done and stop paying close attention. A ten-year-old has more common sense than four sixteen-year-olds put together. Hormones begin shooting every which way, and teenaged nervous systems malfunction, causing them to lose their reasoning abilities. "Oh, I don't know," she said, hesitantly. "I'd rather not. I'm a little busy." I bet. I decided to play my hunch. "If you don't answer my questions, I'll have to find your parents and tell them." I managed a clear tone of implied threat and leaned to the left so I could stare behind her. "You wouldn't like that, would you? — Deb Baker

In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology,3 researchers asked eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds which criteria they felt were most indicative of adulthood. Their criteria were, in order of importance: (1) accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions; (2) establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult; (3) being financially independent from parents; and (4) deciding on beliefs/values independently of parents/other influences. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up. — Sharon Olds

You're infamous, Tally. Everyone's terrified of you. The new system may have made the other cities nervous, but they seem to think my little gang of psychotic sixteen-year-olds is worse - Cable to Tally — Scott Westerfeld

Contrast J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and never goes beyond it; and so his novel, published for adults, is better appreciated by ten-year-olds. The — Ursula K. Le Guin

The decision for me was whether to have 'The Father' be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else. — Sharon Olds

'Saw' is a particularly popular film with 14-30 year olds, so I'll be at a playground and meet six or 10 skateboarders who just wanna talk about 'Saw.' — Tobin Bell

They asked a bunch of ninety-five-year-olds, I don't know where they found them all, Florida I guess, but anyway they asked them if they could do it all over again and live their life again what would they do differently. The three things that almost all of them said were: (1) They would reflect more. Enjoy more moments. More sunrises and sunsets. More moments of joy. (2) They would take more risks and chances. Life is too short not to go for it. (3) They would have left a legacy. Something that would live on after they die. — Jon Gordon

I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence. — Joshua Cohen

You know what it is, the reason so many 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds are saying 'Drive' is their favorite movie is that 'Drive' is a 90-minute trip into what a lot of seventies filmmaking was. It encapsulates the best of a certain kind of style, and a style that a lot of people haven't seen before, with the music and the way it's edited. — Albert Brooks

I will tell you, when 20 6-year-olds are gunned down and Congress literally does nothing, yeah that's the closest I came to feeling disgusted. — Barack Obama

Wes Anderson's films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them. — Noah Baumbach

I gazed at him. He was old enough to know that few things were fair. Most five-year-olds had already discovered it. — Dick Francis

America Online customers are upset because the company has decided to allow advertising in its chat rooms. I can see why: you got computer sex, you can download pornography, people are making dates with 10 year-olds. Hey, what's this? A Pepsi ad? They're ruining the integrity of the Internet! — Jay Leno

Those who had the remaining jobs would have to buy the cheapest stuff possible with their drastically reduced wages, and in order for the manufacturers to keep that stuff cheap, it would have to be made by fifteen-year-olds in China. — Michael Moore

Every day, three times per second, we produce the equivalent of the amount of data that the Library of Congress has in its entire print collection, right? But most of it is like cat videos on YouTube or 13-year-olds exchanging text messages about the next Twilight movie. — Nate Silver

One of the problems with hip hop is lack of infrastructure and not being able to control its own course. I don't like that hip hop is full of infantile 35-year-olds. Hip hop cannot afford to be lazy. — Chuck D

Parents find many different ways to work their way through the assertiveness of their two-year-olds, but seeing that assertiveness as positive energy being directed toward growth as a competent individual may open up some new possibilities. — Fred Rogers

And tried to redesign the computers using these newer parts. The challenge he set himself was to replicate the design using the fewest components possible. Each night he would try to improve his drawing from the night before. By the end of his senior year, he had become a master. "I was now designing computers with half the number of chips the actual company had in their own design, but only on paper." He never told his friends. After all, most seventeen-year-olds were getting their kicks in other ways. On Thanksgiving weekend of his senior year, Wozniak visited the University of Colorado. It was closed for the holiday, but he found an engineering student who took him on a tour of the labs. He begged his father to let him go there, even — Walter Isaacson

Bread baking is a daily activity for 2- year-olds in this Montessori infant community in Sweden and in many other places. — Susan Mayclin Stephenson

Feeling are like three-year-olds. They're not rational. They're just there. — Meg Rosoff

Let's face it, we were all once three-year-olds who stood in the middle of the living room and everybody thought we were so adorable. Only some of us grow up and get paid for it. — Meryl Streep

The older I get, the more I feel — Sharon Olds

Right after 9/11 there was a magazine with a cover of kids, mostly 12-14 year-olds, who were being trained for military combat. I thought that this had just gone too far. — Eddie Bernice Johnson

When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver. — Sharon Olds

At one point, I was painting shells and selling them at gas stations for five cents. I was six years old or something. — Joshua Greenberg

A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything. — Ben Folds

When I was a teenager, I was an umpire for a competitive league for 8- to 9-year-olds. I was really bad at it because I didn't know all the rules, and all these kids were better athletes than me. I made a bad call, and this dad snapped on me. Then he dumped his trash from his cooler, and I had to kick him out of the stands. — Adam DeVine

My dad's an actor. Ever since I was little, I'd watch him do it, and I was always very into it. I got into when I was about two years old. I started out with print work, doing modeling and stuff. Then I got into commercials and TV. Once I started, I loved doing it. It's just something that I've continuted over the years, and I love it. — Corbin Bleu

1. In the end, as much as the responsibility seems to lie with Beijing, it also lies with the global consumer. Our appetite for the $30 DVD player and the $3 T-shirt helps keep jewelry factories filled with dust, illegal mines open and 16-year-olds working past midnight. We all pay the China price. — Alexandra Harney

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown. — Sharon Olds

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

I have never thought I could take it, not even
for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,
to stand between them and and pain. But I come from a
long line
of women
who put themselves
first. — Sharon Olds

Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from. — Thomas Sowell

Finally when he climbed below deck after dark, wondering where his dinner was, perhaps with a storm come up and rough seas and blinding rains, I'd sulk and lure him into the warm and steamy darkness and from the hairs of his warm body I'd breed a myriad smiling, sparkle-eyed one-year-olds, my broods, my flocks. In the churning seas, below the waves, together inside our hammock woven in coarse sailcloth by Unguentine's deft hands, a spherical webbed sack which hung and swivelled between the two walls of our bedroom, we would spin round and round with lapping tongues and the soft suction of lips, whirling, our amorous centrifuge, all night long, zipped inside against the elements. Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars and all the rest. — Stanley Crawford

Others point to data showing that even as toddlers, 40 percent of American two-year-olds watch TV for at least three hours a day - hours they are not interacting with people who can help them learn to get along better. The more TV they watch, the more unruly they are by school age. — Daniel Goleman

By teaching twenty-something year olds responsible debt management practices, we can help them create a balanced lifestyle and find peace of mind through increased financial awareness, smart saving and long-term investing. — Alexa Von Tobel

So I did quit coffee and I did quit smoking. But I haven't managed that with drinking! — Sharon Olds

Phoenix sank to the desk chair and stared at her computer screen. "I don't know. I've lived like this for so long, it's who I am. Everything seems so stupid. Like, look at this girl,writing to Sasha. She's all" - he spoke in a falsetto voice - "'OMG!' and 'LOL!' and 'WTF?' and 'Girl, you should totes go out with Tyler in Telluride!'" He looked up at her."You're seventeen years old, and this is how seventeenyear-olds talk to each other. I'm a thousand years old, and this stuff is like alien-speak to me. If I found another Anabo,she'd be writing OMG and I'd be thinking, You're f'ing
kidding me. — Trinity Faegen

India needs a change - it cannot be ruled by 80-year-olds and by people who have done nothing for it. — Arjun Rampal

Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8-year-olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me. — Hugh Jackman

He considered the hard times in his life. All the things he had been afraid of. All those years wasted, he told himself, because I was terrified of being different. That's why all us fifty-four-year-olds end up looking so much alike. All of us are terrified of being different. — Stuart McLean

The 33 or 34-year-olds will be 36 or 37 by the time the next World Cup comes around, if they're not careful. — Kevin Keegan

It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play ... today's children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games. — Marie Winn

Seeing yourself as responsible for the quality of your relationship, as a prime mover in your life, I think is a bold, amazing step. — Sharon Olds

As if languagelessness was a step up, in evolution, from the chatter of consciousness. — Sharon Olds

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz

We are in a time, because of the proliferation of online media and a hundred channels on cable, where teenagers and young adults and eight- and nine-year-olds do not read enough. And the SAT is very unforgiving for students who do not read. — Jonathan Grayer

I didn't write them a happy ending because 17-year-olds don't get endings.
They get beginnings. — Rainbow Rowell

Ever since the Tim Burton Batman of 1989, it has been de rigueur in movies to focus on the freaky alienation aspect of the superhero's life: This is how talented people make movies for 14-year-olds while retaining their self-respect. — David Edelstein

Life has a funny way of giving us answers when we haven't even asked the questions. — Jennifer Olds

There's an old rule of thumb in politics that 90 percent of all 90 year-olds vote and 25 percent of all 25 year-olds vote. — Joseph P. Kennedy III

Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in. — Sharon Olds

In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained. — Anne Lamott

Who cares about 17-21 year olds? Jack Myers does, and you should, too, if you want a front row seat on where the future of business and civilization is going. — Geraldine Laybourne

If I could
choose, a place to die,
it would never have been in your arms, old darling — Sharon Olds

Like the death of a crone in one twin bed as a child is born in the other. Have faith, old heart. What is living, anyway, but dying. — Sharon Olds

Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream or whatever. — Sharon Olds

A three-year-old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. There is nothing that calms them. They can't focus. You can't tell them enough stories. They don't understand why they are still awake four hours past their bedtime. This is commonly understood by all parents of three-year-olds and has inspired great works of literature, such as Go the F-ck to Sleep. — Jim Gaffigan

I could maybe coach kids' basketball. I know enough about basketball where I feel like I could coach 12-year-olds pretty effectively. — Hannibal Buress

Nine-year-olds were terrifying creatures. — Anonymous

Obviously there are a lot of 12-year-olds over in America who are incredible singers. — Shayne Ward

One of the duties of a baseball fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him. — Sharon Olds