I write a lot about disadvantaged people, particularly vulnerable children, because I feel that that's who I was. That is familiar terrain for me. And I try to write about things that are very close to me because I want people to feel the passion that I have for the subject.

May this plain statement of facts prevail on the friends of the rising generation to interpose for their welfare; that the education of children may no longer be to parent and master a lottery, in which the prizes bear no proportion to the enormous number of blanks.

I see people as haunted by the selves they don't know... I don't have children, but I have nieces and nephews, and one thing I notice is how fascinated they are by stories of their lives before they can remember.

I want to help children in Serbia and around the world so they can realize their dreams.

I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

I can't think of anything more important than the environment we leave to our children and our children's children.

I knew my own mother had been in the theater for a while and had taught children, because she used to teach me the pieces that she taught them, but she did much more than that.

If, like me, nothing is more important to you than our children's future, then their opportunities must be protected.

Children don't understand about people loving each other and then suddenly not.

I watch children a great deal; their idea is that rules are always negotiable, whereas you absolutely cannot joke at the airport about your toothpaste, and you cannot rollerblade in Grand Central Station. I keep running up against these things.

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.

Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.

My grandmother gave birth to 13 children and I come from a long line of women who gave birth in their 40s.

A lot of schools benefit from parents who are first- or second-generation immigrants, who expect the best for their children.

I thoroughly enjoy my children's birthdays, despite the fact their parties are an apocalyptic mix of hall-booking, Nerf-gun-hiring, refreshment-organising and talking to parents whose names you've forgotten.

In the global push to stop gender-based violence, men in the entertainment industry need to join forces with women to end violence by men against women and children.

When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children; I have attended more than one funeral for a child who has died from an asthma attack.

I also really liked playing Mr. Tumnus in 'Narnia'. I got to play my favorite character in children's literature, which I loved. You don't get the chance to do that in other jobs.

On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?

'The Man Who Loved Children,' Christina Stead's masterpiece, remains the most fabulous book that hardly anyone I know has read.