Genius has somewhat of the infantine; but of the childish not a touch or taint.
Children are curious and are risk takers. They have lots of courage. They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous. A child initially trusts life and the processes of life.
My brother tried to explain sex to me when I was 7 - and he did it with a cup.
You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.
Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.
We are here to feel, wonder and gaze in awe at the world. Instead of just teaching our children how to use things and do things, I suggest we nourish their sense of wonder.
Walt Disney and I always said we were two children looking for our inner adults.
…their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.
Children are young, but they're not naive. And they're honest. They're not going to keep wide awake if the story is boring. When they get excited you can see it in their eyes.
My earliest memory? Trying to use a red jelly bean as lipstick.
The capacity for "uncontaminated wonder," ultimately, is what distinguishes the successful from the ordinary, the happily engaged players of whatever era from the chronically disappointed and malcontent. Therein lies a lesson for geeks, geezers, and the sea of people who fall in between.
Idealism in the young, I guess I'm saying, is curiosity as well as goodness trying to express itself.
When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.
Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world - any world. The very best of all.
I try to convey this feeling of being innocent in a mystical state, being in a place that's new, seeing things with brand new eyes, for better or worse. I just imagine this little kid floating on a beautiful king-size bed over the city at night, seeing all sorts of crazy stuff happening in the world. To me, half the fun is all the stories other people have.
I remember being superyoung, like nine or ten years old, and thinking, 'Man, I wonder what famous people eat for breakfast. They must have some special kind of cereal!' My mind was so warped by the idea of fame.
The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.
Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.
For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one idea leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander.
I think I still keep my sense of wonder, which I call childlike, not childish, childlike. I still have a vivid imagination, and I like to try a lot of new things.
To that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting.
It is the childlike part of us that produces works of the imagination. When we were children time passed so slow with us that we seemed to have time for everything.
Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then.
Try to live with the same intensity as a child. He doesn't ask for explanations; he dives into each day as if it were a new adventure and, at night, sleeps tired and happy.
Sometimes the gift of an inquisitive nature to the young can be greater than that of the wisdom which comes of age.
