Quotes About Innocence

At 20 years old, I was better at playing with toys than I was as a kid.

In kindergarten, we'd tell stories with our toys. We'd set a timer for two hours because we knew that was how long a movie was.

My favorite part on 'Energy Fields,' at the end of the track is a little girl laughing, and to me, it's a child watching the world, her friends, and so-called grownup people, and the way they try to understand the world.

I remember, when I was 7, my dad found a pregnant dog on the railroad track one day and brought her home. So my mom explained about how this dog was married but that her husband had passed away - she didn't want me to even think that a dog could have babies without being married.

Over my desk hangs a poster from The Railway Children that my husband had framed for me. It is so lovely to see the children smiling as they run down the railway track.

I would get so into playing as a kid that I'd lose track of time.

It was an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy who was half-past three; And the way they played together Was beautiful to see.

Like love, travel makes you innocent again.

You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.

I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.

If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!

The other day, when my 4-year-old saw a flowering tree and said, "Daddy, it's raining petals," that was poetry that just melted my heart into a mushy, yummy Fudgsicle.

When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree.

Being a child is horrible. It is slightly better than being a tree or a piece of heavy machinery but not half as good as being a domestic cat.

I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?

I grew up on a Christmas tree farm with all this space to run around, and the [freedom] to be a crazy kid with tangled hair.

We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children.

I come to you defenses down with the trust of a child.

For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust

Children are naive-they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.

No matter how old we become, we can still call them 'Holy Mother' and 'Father' and put a child-like trust in them.

Whether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none, we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe.

We need a childlike trust that God is good... ultimately we are OK. That is a simple, beautiful pure thing that can be complicated ferociously by all sorts of intellectual categories.