Gordon Lightfoot Quotes

Age 10. I joined the school marching band as a drummer.

Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.

Most veterans detested training camp, but not me. I loved having a dorm room and a little fridge with snacks, and I looked forward to goofing around in the meetings.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

When you're a kid going on being an adult, everything radiates so deeply and resonates so passionately, and I like the opportunity to tell those stories.

Strange how when you're young you have no memories...Then one day you wake up and BOOM, memories overpower all else in your life, forever making the present moment seem sad and unable to compete with a glorious past that now has a life of its own.

High school. You know, people say, 'I'll never do so-and-so again' - then they do it. So what? Sometimes somebody has crack, and you're looking to stay awake.

Suppose there aren't any more A + days once you get to be twelve? Wouldn't that be something! To spend the rest of your life looking for an A + day and not finding it.

Of the quaking recruit, three pitched battles make a grim grenadier; and he who shrank from the muzzle of a cannon, is now ready to yield his mustache for a sponge.

The Columbia years are the most sentimental for me. My parents were together through most of that time and we were a happy, sort of normal family.

I miss third grade because you could kill people in dodgeball. Remember the rules to dodgeball? If you're fat or have glasses, don't show up because you'll die.

I'd give all the wealth that years have piled, the slow result of life's decay, To be once more a little child for one bright summer day.

You're basically the same person forever so you find the same stuff funny forever. The Muppet Show spoke to me at 5 and it speaks to me in my late 30s in the same way.

I don't really miss God but I sure miss Santa Claus!

Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.

The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

I go with what I like and I generally just cling to things that are pastel and remind me of being a little kid. It's just what it is right now, but I go through phases.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's lost steps.

You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business. They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.

To expect ... the same service from raw and undisciplined recruits, as from veteran soldiers, is to expect what never did and perhaps never will happen. Men, who are familiarized to danger, meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.

The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.

Sure, I love fairy tales.