Childhood Quotes

“I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail.
Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

“The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

“To Alef, the letter
that begins the alphabets
of both Arabic and Hebrew-
two Semitic languages,
sisters for centuries.

May we find the language
that takes us
to the only home there is -
one another's hearts.

...

Alef knows
That a thread
Of a story
Stitches together
A wound.”
― Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood

“There are many roles that people play and many images that they project. There is, for example, the "nice" man who is always smiling and agreeable. "Such a nice man," people say. "He never gets angry." The facade always covers its opposite expression. Inside, such a person is full of rage that he dares not acknowledge or show. Some men put up a tough exterior to hide a very sensitive, childlike quality. Even failure can be a role. Many masochistic characters engage in the game of failure to cover an inner feeling of superiority. An outward show of superiority could bring down on them the jealous wrath of the father and the threat of castration. As long as they act like failures they can retain some sexuality, since they are not a threat to her father.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear Of Life

“Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.”
― Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me

“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I think repressing what happened is what saved me in my childhood. I was able to use my imagination to create happy events, but a little girl can carry only so much on her own.”
― Erin Merryn, Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness

“In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“The ground was silvery, as if some stars had fallen there.”
― Heather O'Neill

“As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole and then caught it and swung quickly around, part of her would keep going, and she would become two girls.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn’t. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she’d have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I’m so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Oh hours of childhood,
when behind each shape more than the past appeared
and what streamed out before us was not the future.
We felt our bodies growing and were at times impatient to be grown up, half for the sake
of those with nothing left but their grownupness.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“Lily appeared, wearing her nightclothes, in the doorway. She gave an impatient sigh. 'This is certainly a very LONG private conversation,' she said. 'And there are certain people waiting for their comfort object.'
Lily,' her mother said fondly, 'you're very close to being an Eight, and when you're an Eight, your comfort object will be taken away. It will be recycled to the younger children. You should be starting to go off to sleep without it.'
But her father had already gone to the shelf and taken down the stuffed elephant which was kept there. Many of the comfort objects, like Lily's, were soft, stuffed, imaginary creatures. Jonas's had been called a bear.
Here you are, Lily-billy,' he said. 'I'll come help you remove your hair ribbons.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture.”
― Simon Pegg, Nerd Do Well

“The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.”
― Jane Smiley

“Never stop being a kid, Richard. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.”
― Richard Bach, Nothing by Chance

“All infants and children require and deserve comfort in order to develop properly. Soft cooing voices, gentle touch, smiles, cleanliness, and wholesome food all contribute to the growing body/mind. And when these basic conditions are absent in childhood, our need for comfort in adulthood can be so profound that it becomes pathological, driving us to seek mothering from anyone who will have us, to use others to fill our emptiness with sex or love, and to risk becoming addicted to a perceived source of comfort.”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers.
One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time.
One is mortal.
They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless.
They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers.
They each die fighting the blind god.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, Blade of Tyshalle

“Over the fence—
Strawberries— grow—
Over the fence—
I could climb— if I tried, I know—
Berries are nice!

But— if I stained my Apron—
God would certainly scold!
Oh, dear, — I guess if He were a Boy—
He'd— climb— if He could!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“There’s a different flavor to children’s literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.”
― Mizuki Nomura, Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation (light novel) (Book Girl, 5)

“Respecting a child teaches them that even the smallest, most powerless, most vulnerable person is worthy of respect. And that is a lesson our world desperately needs to learn.”
― L.R. Knost

“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons.

Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down.

She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself.

I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

“Then Deborah stood at the wicket gate, the boundary, and there was a woman with outstretched hand, demanding tickets.

"Pass through," she said when Deborah reached her. "We saw you coming." The wicket gate became a turnstile. Deborah pushed against it and there was no resistance, she was through.

"What is it?" she asked. "Am I really here at last? Is this the bottom of the pool?"

"It could be," smiled the woman. "There are so many ways. You just happened to choose this one."

Other people were pressing to come through. They had no faces, they were only shadows. Deborah stood aside to let them by, and in a moment they had gone, all phantoms.

"Why only now, tonight?" asked Deborah. "Why not in the afternoon, when I came to the pool?"

"It's a trick," said the woman. "You seize on the moment in time. We were here this afternoon. We're always here. Our life goes on around you, but nobody knows it. The trick's easier by night, that's all."

"Am I dreaming, then?" asked Deborah.

"No," said the woman, "this isn't a dream. And it isn't death, either. It's the secret world."

The secret world... It was something Deborah had always known, and now the pattern was complete. The memory of it, and the relief, were so tremendous that something seemed to burst inside her heart.

"Of course..." she said, "of course..." and everything that had ever been fell into place. There was no disharmony. The joy was indescribable, and the surge of feeling, like wings about her in the air, lifted her away from the turnstile and the woman, and she had all knowledge. That was it - the invasion of knowledge. ("The Pool")”
― Daphne du Maurier, Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories

“If I'd been a cowboy, it might've ended well.
Somewhere on the ramble, I'm sure I'd have to sell
My guns along the highway. My coins to the table
To make a gambler's double, I'd double debts to pay.
Prob'ly shrink and slink away, It mightn't've ended well.

What If I'd been a sailor? I think it might've ended well.
From August to May
For a searat of man drifting through eternal blue, aboard the finest Debris.
I might've called the shanties. From daybreak to storm's set, lines stay Taught, over rhythm unbroken.
But, oh, there's a schism unspoken, a mighty calling of the lee.
An absentminded Pirate, unaccustomed to the sea;
To the land, a traitor. I think it mightn't've ended well.

What might've worked for me? What might've ended well?
Soldier, to bloody sally forth through hell?
Teacher of glorious stories to tell?
Man of gold, or stores to sell?
Lover to a gentle belle?
Maybe a camel;
A seashell.
What mightn't've been a life where it mightn't've ended well?”
― Dylan Thomas McCall

“And if I sit in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I am not?”
― John Logan, Peter and Alice

“Sometimes Midas suspected that life was a film with subliminal messages. Things would move along with an acceptable degree of predictability, then be punctuated by some horrible childhood memory.”
― Ali Shaw, The Girl With Glass Feet

“Seeing the person yeu love come home
Happiness is so simple to a child”
― Sandesh Hukpachongbang

“I coped, in the grand tradition of children everywhere, by retreating into my imagination.”
― Tana French, In the Woods

“. . . because we cannot conceive that as we grow up our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so fondly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain essentially the same individuals as before.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall