Quotes & Sayings About Where You Grew Up

Sometimes home wasn't where you grew up. Home was where you were meant to be. — Kristen Ashley

I grew up in an era where you had to find your own way as a woman. When I was a kid, there was this whole physical and emotional neatness and purity that a woman was supposed to have, and I didn't fit into that. — Patti Scialfa

Home is hard. Harder than Reasons. It's more a storage unit for your life and its collections. It's more than an address, or even the house you grew up in. People say home is where the heart is, but I think maybe home is the heart. Not a place or a time, but an organ, pumping life into my life. There may be more mosquitos and stepmothers than I imagined, but it's still my heart. My home. — David Arnold

It's an ironic thing about being an immigrant kid, growing up - 'cause I grew up in the UK and went to a British boarding school and we would go to chapel every Sunday morning. And we'd actually have religious studies and religious studies means Christian studies where you study the Bible. — Aasif Mandvi

Where I grew up, we had the three TV networks, maybe two radio stations, no cable TV. We still had a long-distance party line in our neighborhood, so you could listen to all your neighbors' phone calls. We had a very small public library, and the nearest bookstore was an hour away. — Marc Andreessen

I grew up in a household where the FryDaddy was always bubbling, and butter and salt were never in short supply. I've never been one to choose the healthy option over the non-healthy option if the healthy option was lacking in taste. I believe a little bad is good for you from time to time. When it comes to maintaining a healthy soul, nothing beats traveling. — Ian Anthony Dale

It is easy to make friends, but not so easy to keep them in the long term. You cancel a couple of arrangements because you are tired, or it seems too far to travel in traffic, and then next thing you know you have not seen somebody you considered a close friend in over a year. In the small town where I grew up, you saw the same people day in and day out for years. My mother was friends with the girls she went to school with until the day she died. I enjoyed the anonymous freedoms of the city, but now I wondered if I had enjoyed them enough to justify being lonely in my latter years. I missed seeing people every day, meeting old friends and making new ones. — Kate Kerrigan

I love the action that I'm able to do. I grew up in Maine, outdoors and playing with the boys and shooting skeet. I have my girly side, too. But, I do like playing the strong female roles, especially now with something as simple as Twitter, where you've got young women following you. — Rachel Nichols

I grew up, especially as an actor thinking that I had to move to New York to be a good actor. But after a while you start to live the world a little bit and you start to appreciate where you're from. — Josh Brolin

Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain. — Yiyun Li

I [Pigpen] grew up in their clubhouse. I understand you because I am you. I also learned to crawl on the sticky floors of where guys made their oaths. But here's the difference, I grew up watching people make stupid mistakes in the name of revenge. — Katie McGarry

The Forest of Arden, where I grew up, is where 'As You Like It' is set. It was idyllic. — Kate Fleetwood

You get to a certain moment where you realize all those humans who landed on the moon did so in between Chris [Nolan] being born and me being born and no one had gone back since, all these Super-8 films we grew up watching of rocket launches, you get to a certain age and you realize all the speeches about going back, they're speeches, there's no money there, we're not going back. — Jonathan Nolan

It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us". — Will Smith

I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.' — Lupita Nyong'o

As a child, I didn't know what they mean by 'to die.' So I grew up in a place where people used to die all the time, but a child is not allowed to see a dead body. When you ask, 'Where is so-and so?' you're told, 'He's gone to another world where we all go to live in the future.' — Emmanuel Jal

The Boy Scouts might have the motto "Be Prepared," but where I grew up, you practically went straight from diapers to manhood. — Phil Robertson

Coming back to where you grew up is like doing some crazy yoga trick, putting your feet in your own mouth and somehow swallowing yourself so there's nothing left; it can't be done, and any sane person ought to be fucking glad it can't . . . — Stephen King

I realize that we are often wary of making these kinds of broad generalizations about different cultural groups
and with good reason. This is the form that racial and ethnic stereotypes take. We want to believe that we are not prisoners of our ethnic histories. But the simple truth is that if you want to understand ... you have to go back to the past ... it matters where you're from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where you great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up and even where your great-great-grandparents grew up. That is a strange and powerful fact. — Malcolm Gladwell

I grew up in the '80s where there's a lot of these kind of post-apocalyptic, post-comet, post-whatever it was, so that always captured my imagination a lot as a little kid, that idea of getting access to secret places and being able to roam around where you're not supposed to. — Gillian Flynn

I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands. — Jennifer Haigh

Traveling around the country where you grew up , lost some of your virginity and a few of your illusions, acquired some lasting neuroses, and then left in a hateful mood, is a slightly schizoid experience. You are at once an outsider to the present and an insider of the past. Or perhaps the other way round. — Kapka Kassabova

Addicts don't like when you tell them they are all the same. Of course not. Who would? But to me, addicts are like actresses, who all audition for the same role in a horror movie. It doesn't matter how they got to the audition. It doesn't matter how or where they grew up, once they get to the audition, all the actresses act in the same way and read the same lines. They all become the same character. — Oliver Markus

I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness. — Mike Mills

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence. — Dylan Moran

Although I grew up in London, I spent summers in Missouri, where my dad lived. It's quite a liberal town, Kansas City. You'd be surprised. — Hayley Atwell

I talk about race and culture, and that's what my fans respond to. If you grew up in an environment where race and culture were never an issue for you, or where you don't see the humor in our so-called differences, then you might not respond to what I'm doing. — Russell Peters

You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it! — Severn Cullis-Suzuki

I'm a third-culture child. It's an interesting concept. Having an American father, a South American mother, born in England, grew up in Hong Kong, went to school in Europe - it makes me a third-culture child, which means you take on the culture of the place where you live. So I'm very adaptable. — Marie-Chantal Claire

Our economy grew at double the rate of the nation. We created 1.3 million jobs. We led the nation seven out of those eight years. We were only one of two states that went to AAA bond rating. I cut taxes, $19 billion. If you do that and apply conservative principles the right way, you create an environment where everybody rises up. — Jeb Bush

My first memories of music were country music and Ronnie Milsap. Where I grew up, it was what you listened to. And anything else, you were somewhat out of place. — Luke Bryan

I'm living in a dream. I really consider myself really lucky. I was born and raised in Guatemala, in a village, where to go to the market you have to take two buses or drive about 20 minutes if you are lucky enough to have a car. I grew up very, very poor and I didn't even know that being an actor could be a career. — Erick Chavarria

I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn't really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it. — Wynton Marsalis

The man they'd come to see was up and standing at the window with his back to them, so that only Sophia saw his squared stance and his shoulders and the brown hair fastened back above the collar of his shirt. He wore no coat, just breeks and boots, and in the fine white shirt he stood there pale and like a ghost, the only thing of light in that dull room.
He spoke again, not looking round, his voice grown hoarser from the illness. 'Did you ye see her? Was she well?'
'She will be now,' the colnel gently said ...
Sophia could not move from where she stood. Could not believe it.
Then he turned, a ghost no longer, but a breathing man. A living man, whose shadowed eyes grew brighter in the grip of hard emotion as he left the window and in two strides crossed to fold her in his arms ... — Susanna Kearsley

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls. — Bill Bryson

I grew up in a remarkable home, the middle of seven children. My parents raised us well. They loved us well. We laughed hard growing up. But being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home, whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some bad decisions about who I hung out with, I dropped out of high school, got kicked out of the house. — Tullian Tchividjian

I grew up in a small town where you know everyone, .. I've been told all my life that I come from too small a town to compete with some of the guys that competed in a higher level growing up. And that kind of drove me through college and drove me in the minor leagues, because I got to face all those big 5- A [school district] guys in the minors. — Roy Oswalt

I grew up in a very small town where nearly everyone knew each other, and odds were that whatever you said about a person would make it back to them by nightfall - something incomers learned, to their frequent embarrassment. — Susanna Kearsley

All I know about 1970s New York City is that it's where I grew up, and you always have an umbilical connection to the time and place of your growing up. It was cheap, didn't have too many people in it, you could go to the movies or whatever on the spur of the moment, you could get by without working too much and especially without involving yourself in the corporate world. — Luc Sante

My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up. — Aasif Mandvi

You learn so much from your parents. We grew up in a home where we were definitely taught to be confident. I definitely give me parents a lot of credit. — Venus Williams

If you grew up where I grew up, you would experience a very different criminal justice system than Camden, New Jersey. — Cory Booker

I am sometimes amazed at what we did not fully grasp in kindergarten. In the years I was a parish minister I was always taken aback when someone came to me and said. 'I've just come from the doctor and he told me I have only a limited time to live'. I was always tempted to shout 'WHAT? You didn't know? You had to pay a doctor to tell you - at your age? Where were you the week in kingergarten when you got the little cup with the cotton and water and seed? Life happened - remember? A plant grew up and the roots grew down. A miracle. And then a few days later the plant was dead. DEAD. Life is short. Were you asleep that week or home sick or what? — Robert Fulghum

I use a lot of specific places in my songs - traditionally, a lot from Minneapolis and St. Paul, where I grew up. Most people, especially when you get into international touring, have not been there. So you say, "Well, isn't it risky to talk about the corner of Franklin Avenue and Lyndale?" If you do it right, someone should say, "God, I know a corner like that." Offering specific details to describe something universal. — Craig Finn

I have a huge interest in hockey because I grew up in Canada, where it's kind of the law that you love hockey. — Matthew Perry

People say that when you return to the place where you grew up, it always seems smaller than you remember ... but I don't know if it was because I had built it up in my memories or I had gotten bigger. Maybe both. — Jeannette Walls

I had a guy at the Groucho bar clawing at my arm nearly in tears saying that until he saw The Departed he thought Americans were the ones on TV. I didn't know you had accents. I didn't know you had a class system. I didn't know you were like us. To which the answer is, probably only where I grew up, but while we're at it don't watch television and think it's the United States of America. — William Monahan

Even though the neighborhood I grew up in had some unhealthy elements, there was a caring there where you knew that you didn't want to get caught doing something wrong. There were bright spots in the neighborhood where I felt nurtured on a community level. — Sonja Sohn

I went back to a small town in Poland where my dad grew up. It was a very traumatic experience for me as a young man to know that my father's family were killed by Nazis, killed by Hitler. And that left, you know, if not intellectually, at least an emotional part of me which said, God, we have got to do everything we can to end this kind of horrific racism or anti-Semitism. And I have spent much of my life trying to fight that. — Bernie Sanders

I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee, and we had 'The Mountain Opry,' where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy. — Rachel Boston

The question is, 'how bad at sports were you as a kid?' I grew up near where they film Jersey Shore. If you weren't tan, muscular, and book-averse, you were a dork and a nerd and a geek and stuff. I remember being into Gary Larsen, Stephen Wright, Peter Sellers ... — Demetri Martin

Every two years, to keep Moore's Law happening, you have to invent ... That's where I grew up. — Brian Krzanich

When you grow up in a city like Boston, where I grew up, a lot of kids became criminals or cops. I never really had a bad take on cops other than I hate when there's one behind me on the highway. — Donnie Wahlberg

Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt's talents and encouraged her talents. Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She's now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Brooklyn, where I grew up, is a competitive burg - there's always a pretty boy around the corner there, and you gotta look better than him. — Theophilus London

I grew up in an eclectic house where people were listening to all types of different music. I also think being educated, eloquent and knowing how to talk for yourself in the industry makes you go a long way. — Tinie Tempah

Broad access to opportunity is the key to a truly equitable America. No matter who you are or where you grew up, Black Faces in White Places provides a blueprint to seizing opportunities at hand - and expanding opportunity for your entire community. — Angela Glover Blackwell

For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you. — Randy Owen

Where I grew up, women's liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage for 15 minutes so she could stretch her legs. — John Rachel

As I grew up, I learned what worked for me. That's where the short dresses came from. And you can't dance in a long dress. — Tina Turner

Amanda [Bynes] and I are the same age so I grew up watching her and really looking up to her and for me, to see this path that's happening and to watch it, is kind of really affecting me in ways that I didn't think it would. It's weird to be in a situation where you can't help. I obviously don't know her at all but I want to bring her back and I want to make her happy and healthy for some reason and she's not there and we can't do anything to help so it kind of sucks. All we're doing is hurting it. — Chrissy Teigen

I grew up in Florida, where if you weren't comfortable dancing, you weren't going to get any girls. — Channing Tatum

All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It's weird I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in America, because I liked it. It's completely bizarre and everybody would ask: 'Where are you from?' And I would say: 'Oh, I'm from London!' — Robert Pattinson

I look forward to going to Chicago because it's where I grew up, and the food there is so munch. Especially during the winter, I get deep dish pizza or Italian beef, and it warms me up. It's something I don't normally get, especially here in L.A. where you're always trying to be healthy. — Ron Funches

The revolution of video had a massive affect. We grew up in a time where suddenly you could own films. Before, they had a theatrical run, and then perhaps they'd come back, or you'd catch them in a retro cinema. — Simon Pegg

You're the most beautiful woman Ive ever seen. i just want you to be mine. I don't ever care what foods you like to eat or where you grew up. It's this primal thing with me, and I'm not a primal person. — C.M. Stunich

Technology won't protect you from being attacked for fresh water. A badass blade will. Back in Eden where I grew up, the closest thing to knifework I'd experienced was cutting up a loaf of warm bread. Last night, I'd gutted a wild prairie chicken after scaling a rock face to find its nest and slit its throat.
What a difference a year makes. — Georgia Clark

My father's best friend, Georgie Terra, was an Italian guy. The children and the cousins and nieces and nephews were children of the Mafia. Those were the children he grew up with. If you want to go to a safe neighborhood, go to where the Mafia is. — Louis Gossett Jr.

In America, people rarely stay in the town where they grew up, rarely stay in close proximity to their parents throughout their lives. You rarely find parents in their old age being taken care of by their children. — Robert Benton

I grew up in Detroit. I grew up in an environment where you were supposed to be Democrat, where they told you that Republicans were evil people and that they were racist. — Benjamin Carson

I grew up doing sitcoms and theater and even playing with the Beach Boys, where you're programmed to perform, your body gets into a rhythm and you know it has to perform. — John Stamos

It's good to be back in New York. I have lived here ten years. I'm originally from Indiana. I know what most of you are thinking: Indiana: Mafia. But the fact of the matter is where I grew up there was something very similar to the Mafia: 4-H. — Jim Gaffigan

When you move away from where you grew up, I think you tend to have even more pride of where you came from. — Kristopher Belman

On the way out to the car, Philip turns to me. "How could you be so stupid? I shrug, stung in spite of myself. "I thought I grew out of it." Philip pulls out his key fob and presses the remote to unlock his Mercedes. I slide into the passenger side, brushing coffee cups off the seat and onto the floor mat, where crumpled printouts from MapQuest soak up any spilled liquid. "I hope you mean sleepwalking," Philip says, "since you obviously didn't grow out of stupid. — Holly Black

A child who was born with a silver spoon is likely to not appreciate all he is provided with.
And it is likely that a child who grew up from the dust to look down on others once the floods gate of success opens up for him.
It is NOT where you come FROM that matters,
But where you are GOING. — Nomthandazo Tsembeni

The way I grew up playing, and the way most Americans have grown up, is that you hit the ball up in the air and then it stops where it lands. — David Duval

I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way. — Jonathan Nolan

I grew up in a country where I remember my parents not being able to have a conversation on the phone. The walls had ears, and you couldn't speak freely. — Jan Koum

I was writing country songs, but I wasn't listening to country yet. I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee, so my roots are country, you know? But I didn't know where those songs came from or where they fit. — Kelsea Ballerini

You may not be able to change the course of government, but you can achieve some peace. And books were the path to that. I grew up in a house where books were everywhere. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Why are you here?
I'm here because this is where my Mom's family is from and after my parents got divorced, she kept the house. Because I was conceived and born and grew up. I'm breathing and my heart is beating and as much as it hurts - as much searing, monumental pain as it causes me - I have to exist. — Brenna Yovanoff

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up. — LeBron James

I grew up in a farming family. I hated cleaning out the chickens but loved hatching them and feeding the new born sheep. The smell of hot milk still has a special resonance for me. Harvest was back-breaking work, though ... Where do you think Jesus got his biceps from? — Joseph Mawle

USA. The land of the free; where you accent didn't matter. But he supposed everybody related to it; movies, TV, fat-food, outlets, you grew up with it. Cultural imperialism. Yet no wonder everybody increasingly hated it: it was stupid, self-serving and so in-your-face that it was setting itself up to be despised — Irvine Welsh

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. — Oprah Winfrey

I grew up in Pittsburgh, where you couldn't even see the noon sun in the sky, and that whole city was cleaned up without the federal government needing to be involved. I think we would have been much better served from the start if people would have better understood the principles of private property. — Ron Paul

living, we cover vast territories; imagine your life drawn on a map - a scribble where you grew up, each bus trip traced between school and home, or a clean line across the sea to a place you flew once. think of the time and things we accumulate, all the while growing more conscious of losing and leaving — Julia Kasdorf

He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up the sides of skyscrapers. He was the Hulk when angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone. As I watched I thought of what Grandma Lynn liked to say when Lindsey and I rolled our eyes or grimaced behind her back. Watch out what faces you make. You'll freeze that way. — Alice Sebold

I was dyslexic and uneducated and left school at 14. I grew up in Finsbury Park, which was a pretty bad place where you had to fight and be beaten. It was just a constant roundabout of violence. — Don McCullin

I was an only child and grew up in York where my parents ran a surgical supplies shop. When I say I wish I had brothers and sisters, friends say it's not what it's cracked up to be, but I think it must be good to have someone who knew you from the beginning. — Kate Atkinson

What I've found is that country doesn't refer to where you grew up as much as where your heart grows down, where it takes root. Country is a state of mind. I believe what ultimately defines being country is simple: a loving heart, a helping hand, an open mind, poor in spirit. — Clay Walker

I grew up on the stage, where you just throw yourself into projects and don't get in your own way. — Jeremy Piven

I grew up wrestling and playing football where, at the end of the game, you have a score and you're either the winner of loser. There's no score in acting, but you qualify your level of success by the people that you work with and the amount of exposure that you have. — Eddie McClintock

I grew up in the Bronx where you would stay up late with your girlfriends, just being silly in our bedrooms, whatever. And I was always the clown. — Jennifer Lopez

No matter what your current condition, how or where you grew up, or what education or training you feel you lack, you can be successful in your chosen endeavor. It is spirit, fortitude, and hardiness that matter more than where you start. — Jack Ma

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete. — Walter Bagehot

When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew up in, the result is you always had family around to take care of you. — Atul Gawande

Where I grew up, in a remote village at the back of a valley, the old still thought the dead needed attending to - a notion so universal, it's enscribed in all religions. If you didn't, they might exact revenge upon the living. — W.G. Sebald

I grew up in a big sky country. Then I lived in Manhattan, where you can only see the sky between buildings, and then I went into a building where you couldn't see the sky at all. I didn't like that so much. — Linda Ronstadt

Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking. — Mary Gaitskill