Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's a little crazy. Last year, I was in seventh grade, and we were the babies at the school - 'cause my middle school's eighth grade and seventh grade - and now I'm eighth grade, and all these new students have come in, and they're all like, 'Oh my gosh! Darci Lynne!'
I can't help but recall my dad and mom. Depression era kids, 8th and 9th grade educations, clawed and scratched to make a living as dairy farmers their whole life. At least two drought cycles nearly took it all away. They just worked harder, longer... and they made it.
I started ninth grade a week after everybody else had started, and I didn't know anybody. I was in a chorus class, and they asked me to bring my guitar to school one day, which I did, and all of a sudden, people knew me... in the halls, people would start saying hello.
I was one of those weird kids who didn't really speak or smile. I remember my teachers would call home and ask if everything was fine at home because I would never smile. Then I got into this phase, from maybe fourth to eighth grade, where my personality just did a 180.
The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.
As we embark on something as ambitious as the Common Core, educators must be able to teach to the standards with the necessary support and collaboration and without the sense that there will be dire consequences if students, schools and their tests don't make the grade.
My parents separated before I was 1 year old. I moved in with my aunt and uncle when I was in fourth grade. I was, like, 8 or 9 years old. I was getting in a lot of trouble when I was in Southern California. My older sisters were in gangs. My older brother was in gangs.
There's a reason that students don't grade their own papers. There's a reason defendants don't sentence themselves. And there's the reason the State Department doesn't get to investigate itself, determine whether or not it made errors in Benghazi. That is Congress's job.
Launching a kid into college is about more than having the money to pay for it. Parents invest so much of their time and identities in the process that it can feel like a part time job. For many parents, the college your child ends up attending becomes a parenting grade.
When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.
As a grown adult, if you can't look a woman or look a man in the eye and say, 'I have serious feelings for you' and instead you have to say, 'Do you like me? Check yes or no,' like we're in grade school, that to me is a red flag of maturity as far as a relationship goes.
I knew I was different when I was about six years of age but I just knew that I wasn't like everybody else. I mean I wasn't like the other kids. I didn't know what that was. But I guess it was when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I'm like, 'Hey, something's wrong here.'
Romance-comedy films usually get led by the main actor and main actress, just the two of them. Indeed, I was not sure if I was ready to bear the responsibility before casting in '7th Grade Civil Servant,' but I started gaining more and more confidence as the drama went on.
I don't know if I'd call it a favorite, but there was an entree in the rotation at my grade school cafeteria called 'Salisbury Steak' that was some kind of freestanding spongiform potage covered in a sauce that would probably have to be spelled 'grayvee' for legal reasons.
One thing that I'm super fortunate of - I grew up in a house where it was all about health and fitness. My dad was a wrestler; he was a boxer. He's always been into working out, and so I was the only kid in the first grade that got carrot sticks at school instead of chips.
I have six brothers and one sister, and I was an ice hockey player when I was younger. I think my dad thought I was going to be in the women's league for ice hockey. But, I totally fell in love with drama in grade school, and I asked my mom if I could get involved with it.
I have only a couple friends, but I've known them since, like, you know, fourth grade or something. I've never changed anything about my little group of friends. I think if you're just smart, and you have the friends who care about you most, that's really all that matters.
I think I knew I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life kind of early. When I was in third grade, I was playing in a talent show, and my dad wrote a two- or three-minute boogie-woogie piece. I played it, everybody loved it, and I was like, 'Wow, this is great.'
If I started something, I had to finish. Like with violin. I started when I was seven only because my best mate wanted to. I hated it and wanted to quit, but Dad made me continue, and I got to grade seven. My parents said I had to know the value of stuff and work for stuff.
I became a Christian within a fundamentalist church. I saw 'A Thief in the Night' on a 16 mm. print when I was in the eighth grade, and I got the whole scare speech from our pastors. 'Do you want to be left here, left behind, for the Tribulation? If not, then come forward.'
I'd have to say that Nixon feels like the public figure who most dominated my life - from the time I went to fourth grade wearing a Nixon-Lodge button in the fall of 1960, through my college years, which overlapped with Kent State, Cambodia, the China trip and all the rest.
In third grade, I was taking tap-dance lessons, and about six weeks before the recital I wanted to quit. My mom said, 'No, you're going to stay with it.' Well, I did it, and I was bad, too! But my parents never let their kids walk away from something because it was too hard.
In second grade, I told a bunch of kids there was a homeless person living between the portable classrooms outside our school. It caused panic, and the principal had to announce on the P.A. system that no one was living there. I pretended I didn't know who started the rumor.
I had a strong propensity, which I still have, to be invisible. In grade school, I'd try to disappear and become formless. I lived in a very imaginary world. I loved poetry and wrote my first novel when I was 9. It was about a little girl and the people she met in the woods.
In sixth grade, I went to a very good private school, and I did learn there. I learned how to read and write. If I had quit school in sixth grade, I would know as much as I know today and would have made one more movie. By the time I got to college, I was so bored and angry.
The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn't allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.
So many people have gone to music production schools for years and years, and they've wanted this their whole entire life, and part of me feels like I've kind of cheated that a bit because I'm not grade A on piano, and I don't know a lot about production. But I do what I do.
When we talk about novels, we don't often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.
I was not good in school. I could never read very fast or very well. I got tested for learning disabilities, for dyslexia. Then I got put on Ritalin and Dexedrine. I took those starting in the eighth grade. As soon as they pumped that drug into me, it would focus me right in.
I was in seventh grade at St. Matthew's. The teachers would tell me, 'God loves you,' and then whack a ruler across my hand. 'Well,' I'd say, 'if God loves me, can you call God? Can you ask Him if it's all right that I didn't do my homework? If it's not, then let Him hit me.'
I have always wanted to work in the theater. I've always felt the glamour of being backstage and that excitement, but I've never actually done it - not since I was in 5th grade, really. But I've had many plays in my films. I feel like maybe theater is a part of my movie work.
When I decided that I wanted to go to college, I wanted to be a school teacher for 7th and 8th grade boys because I felt that was an important time for them. I had gone astray at that point in my life and really wanted to help keep them from making the same mistake I had made.
Julia is one of the most loyal people who ever lived. Her best friend is her best friend from third grade, and her other best friends are her best friends from Northwestern. Once you're a pal, you're a pal for life with Jules. I'm not just flattering her because she's my wife.
Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.
I've been reading Greek mythology since I was a kid. I also taught it when I was a sixth grade teacher, so I knew a lot of mythological monsters already. Sometimes I still use books and Web sites to research, though. Every time I research Greek mythology, I learn something new!
I was a bully in fifth and sixth grade. I wasn't one of the bullies - I wasn't strong or dominant enough to be one of the kids who bullied everyone in equal measure. I was a bully, in that I bullied a kid, whose name I won't mention here. My bullying was selective and personal.
South Africa is a whole other world. I went to grade school there and high school in Johannesburg, and before that, my family lived in Kenya in Nairobi where my brother was actually born, and my sister was born in Capetown. I spent the first 10 years of my life in South Africa.
As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.
Literally, my earliest memory, my earliest vivid memory, is the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Yeah, I was in fourth grade, and I was just so captivated. And I think you'll find a lot of space scientists of my generation will say the same thing. Apollo was a big event for them.
I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen with which to record my experiences.
Growing up in Augusta in such a protected and loving community is something that I really enjoy talking about. I love talking about - even though I grew up, of course, in the time of segregated schools: Brown vs. Board of Education came along after I was already in first grade.
I grew up on Long Island, and from as early as I can remember, as far back as first grade, I had two real passions - one of them was putting on plays, and the other was journalism. I was directing plays and editing school papers from first grade on, all the way through college.
When I was in the ninth grade, I had a teacher in Dallas, Texas, named Elizabeth Enlow in English class. Every Friday, we had to write a little essay, and you had to incorporate three particular words into the story. That was the sole direction. And to me, this was so much fun.
I want to talk about my very first play, when I was in eighth grade. One day, my English teacher, Mrs. Baker, announced that we were going to read 'On Borrowed Time' out loud in class. I was a mediocre student; I was terrified that she was going to call on me, so I hid my head.
I had a Spanish teacher in high school. I rarely got in trouble in her room because I felt I was disappointing her if I got a bad grade. That had more power over me than teachers who told me I talked too much. That level of respect I had for her made me not want to fail for her.
When I was in fifth grade - so, about 11 - my folks moved us to Denmark. And so not only did I have all new friends and all new surroundings, I didn't even understand what they were talking about, which was very difficult and kind of started me, I think, on my path to animation.
Our quarterbacks were getting hurt; a couple got kicked out of school. The coach asked who wanted to try out for QB. I went and tried out, and from there on, I was a quarterback. I was ineligible in 10th grade until spring, so I did baseball. I started in left field and pitched.
I have this firm belief that I am who I am for a reason. If I change something, I'm cheating myself of whatever it is I'm supposed to learn from my body. You know, I'm legally blind. I'm 20/750, since I was in fifth grade. I wear glasses and contacts. But I won't even get LASIK.
After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.
I grew up watching 'Ghostbusters.' I loved that movie before I knew it was a comedy! As a kid, I lived between Ghana and Detroit and in Ghana for, like, first and second grade. And I had a VHS tape of that, and I would watch it every day. It's kind of like why I got into comedy.