Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've been obsessed with words since I was a little girl, and I am fortunate that each week as resident word expert on 'Countdown' I am ideally placed to quiz my guests in dictionary corner about the words and phrases they use.
Many people make fun of me because I'm always so dressed up, but they don't understand that there's a little girl inside me who always wanted to be that dressed up but never got to do that because I was always a certain weight.
I've had lots of supernatural experiences, but I always just blame them on my brain playing tricks. About five years ago, I woke up to a little girl lying next to me in my bed and when I reacted to her, she mirrored what I did.
Honestly, I didn't like snowboarding when I was a little girl. As I got older, it became something I did with my dad. When I was 10, I knew I was good for my age, but I never felt that I was prodigy-level or anything like that.
When Chynna was born, the first thing I said when they placed her in my arms was, 'I'm going to have so much fun with this little girl.' And I have. I've tried to guide her, make her life happy, and just let her prepare for life.
I started singing in pubs and clubs around Belfast when I was 10. My dad is a musician, and he took me 'round; I impersonated Tina Turner and Shirley Bassey, and the crowd couldn't believe what was coming out of this little girl.
I want my little girl to tell me who she is so I can encourage her and not impose my desires for her on her life. I want her to dream big and to know that if she is willing to earn it, she can have anything - and become anything.
When you're a little girl, and you're watching the Olympics, and you see this very diverse group of gymnasts out there, and - I think this team, the Final 5, will inspire so many little girls to go out there and do what they love.
When I was a little girl - if I could have - I would have gone a year without washing my hair. I hated it, to the point where my sisters had to pay me to wash my hair. I think, after experiencing that, I like to wash it every day.
I have no idea what was the first record I ever bought, but I think I asked my mom to buy me... um... a collection of Beethoven when I was a little girl because I became very addicted to his music. It might have been piano sonatas.
Yeah, I shoot. I shot with my dad a little bit when I was little. He was a Marine, so it wasn't like he would take me to the ballet. We would go to a shooting range. It was the only thing he knew to teach his little girl how to do.
My child has changed things for me. Lately, I really wish there were greater roles for women. I think I see it in a different way now. I look at my little girl and I don't want her to think that all she has to be is pretty and quiet.
When I was three years old, a nanny took me shopping and I saw large cut-outs of Mary Poppins in the store and yelled, 'That's mummy!' These women walked by and said, 'Oh how cute. That little girl thinks that Mary Poppins is her mum.'
You know, I was chubby when I was a little girl. And I have all those issues everyone else has. But I try not to. And I've learned over the years that it's such a waste of time. And people like me whether I'm a little bit fatter or not.
When we began to tour, no one expected me to be a part of the band, so I used that as a tool, and would start the set off-stage or in the audience, as a surprise, because no one expected this little girl to get up and rock the way I do.
I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.
Even as a little girl, my mom never wanted me to watch BET, but when I was at my grandparents' house, and my older cousins were there and I could watch it, I was infatuated with the idea that I could one day be a DJ or the host of a show.
I was just a little girl watching TV and wanting to be in it. My parents had no idea how to get me there, but here I am as a part of this great cast on the Disney Channel. Truly, if you just want to do this, then you have to commit to it.
I made my first million pounds at the age of 26. As a little girl, I said I would retire when I had made my first million. The reality was different. When I did make it, I wanted to make another million, and another, and another after that.
My first job, which I had to take when not more than fifteen, was assistant to a fruit peddler. It seemed all right to me until a little girl told me snootily, 'We never deal with peddler!' Thereupon I resigned, ashamed of what I was doing.
I was not a popular little girl. I played Robinson Crusoe in a small wooden fort that my parents built for me in the back yard. In the fort, I was neither ostracized nor ill at ease - I was self-reliant, brave, ingeniously surviving, if lost.
I remember being this little girl missing her daddy and living so far away in France and from anything that was familiar to me. I felt so different and so isolated. When you're removed from everything that's familiar, you realize who you are.
As a black woman, I've always had to work hard to earn my respect as a musician - and as a young woman, too. As a writer, in certain sessions or certain rooms people think, 'Who's kid is this? Who's this little girl?' I've had to prove myself.
When I was a teeny little girl, I was in dancing school, and I sang. We had to put a dance to a song, so I went to the 10-cent store one day and looked at all the sheet music. It was all laid out, and I picked 'Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.'
I remember I had a copy of 'David Copperfield' that I lugged around at primary school. I started reading it when I was seven, and I was eight when I finished it. I read an awful lot as a little girl and played games and imagined lots of things.
When I was a little girl my parents always told me do everything you want in an artistic way. If you want to draw, make a drawing. Just do it. And if you want to play piano, play piano. It was a very free childhood where everything was possible.
My grandmother took me to a play, and... there was a little girl on stage. And as soon as I saw her on stage, I thought, 'This is my job'... I was probably, like, 7 or 8. I was very young... It was 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'.
When I was a little girl, my family was extremely close, loving and really happy, and then overnight, things just became a nightmare, and instead of them becoming a nightmare and getting better, they became a nightmare and just kept getting worse.
Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and I were the first female headliners, where we would book our own opening acts. Before that, it was a standing joke that it was more like we had 'pretty little girl singers' opening for a male headliner.
When I graduated from high school, I made the decision to pursue my dance training in London, England. I was so scared at first, not knowing if this little girl from small town Canada could possibly make it with these highly trained London dancers.
I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'
When I was a little girl, if I didn't eat my soup, my mother would say, 'You have to think of all the Chinese children who have nothing to eat.' But now, for my children, Chinese people make everything, and for my grandchildren, they buy everything.
When I was a little girl, I told everyone I was going to marry a very clever scientist and have ten children. I would always draw the children, and they included blond-haired twin boys whom I named Theodore and Frederick: Teddy and Freddy for short.
In my relationship with a young guy I was going with in a band - his name was Sylvester, and I think he had another little girl on the side - I told him, 'If you lose me, you're going to lose a good thing.' And I went home and put that poem to music.
I was always very maternal with my friends. I wasn't the kind of little girl that played with dolls and pretended I was the mommy. I wasn't that child, so when I say I was always maternal, I don't mean in that sense - but I've always been a nurturer.
It's interesting when people access their inner little girl or little boy. I remember doing tons of those exercises when I was in school, where you're trying to dig into your vulnerability. There's no mask for a child, so all those feelings are real.
My mother, Yolanda, was a little girl who never grew up, and sometimes we would laugh, and I would say things like, 'Okay, so now it looks like I am your mother and you are my daughter,' to which she would reply, 'Well, yes. Handle it and pamper me.'
Before I went to work for 'Playboy,' I planned to apply to Yale to get a public policy master's. I felt drawn to go into politics. Even before that, my dream was to wind up either in the Senate or on the Supreme Court. I had big dreams as a little girl.
I don't really believe there is such a thing as bad fashion - it is all self-expression, which used to get me into trouble when I was a little girl because I think I started wearing heels when I was about ten, and I always refused to wear matching socks.
It's definitely a little bit ironic being known for my hair because, as a little girl, I had no idea what I was doing with it. I was insecure about it. I didn't have as many references to curly girls, and I wanted to just fit in with all my other friends.
I had always been pegged for being feminine. People would always say, 'Ooh, that's a pretty little girl.' They would talk about my eyelashes or that I was sensitive or that I was crying all the time. I didn't want to play in the dirt outside with the boys.
When I was a little girl, my dad always said to me that I was going to be this great businesswoman, that I was going to be the CEO of IBM. So that's what I came into the world thinking, that I was going to go into the business world and make my mark there.
This is what I've always wanted to do ever since I was a little girl. Coming from dance and theater and what was accessible to me in my hometown, it was all I did after school and on the weekends. The idea of making my hobby into my job was the ultimate quest.
I've got so many dance heroes, and it's such a cliche, but how can I not say Michael Jackson? Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul - they are the people I remember when I was a little girl, watching their videos and trying to learn all the choreography.
Well, when I was a little girl we had 17 cats once. They all lived outside, and they kept having more kittens. My mom made us put little ribbons around each kitten's neck, put them in a wagon, and go door-to-door around the neighborhood to try to give them away.
My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.
When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?
When I was a little girl, about eight, I remember going into the Body Shop - that was my first introduction to campaigning. There would always be a petition at the till about fair-trade or stop testing on animals, and the message was: get involved and make change.
If you've seen a photo of me from when I was a kid, I don't think anyone would have expected that going in front of the camera was something that I was going to do. I can't believe how little effort my parents put into making me seem like an appealing little girl.
Ever since I was a little girl, I've worried too much. It always bothers me because sometimes you end up worrying more about the worry and you are not resolving things that are right there in front of you. I have been like that all my life, and it's hard to change.