Quotes About Innocence

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go hide in the closet for three or for hours. They get down on their knees and pray for you to return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely children probably wrote the Bible.

Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.

Heather Vogel Frederick

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized. —Margaret Atwood

Claude's kindergarten was full-day, six whole hours of sitting quietly and following rules and being away from home where someone—everyone—loved him best of all.

Tears crawled out of Claude's eyes and nose, and besides he was only five, but he tried to comfort his parents anyway. 'I just feel a little bit sad. Sad isn't bleeding. Sad is okay.

We are crayons and lunchboxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.

I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.

Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children's eyes.

She made love with the freshness of an impatient virgin and the ingenuity of a sex-scarred whore.

The locust continues to devour the world Hunger persists Love lurches on listing to starboard like a ship in a bottle Human longing goes on Loneliness a curse Innocence persists Ignorance persists

and I am waiting/ for Alice in Wonderland/ to retransmit to me/ her total dream of innocence

The pennycandystore beyond the El is where i first fell in love with unreality Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom of that september afternoon A cat upon the counter moved among the licorice sticks and tootsie rolls and Oh Boy Gum Outside the leaves were falling as they died A wind had blown away the sun A girl ran in Her hair was rainy Her breasts were breathless in the little room Outside the leaves were falling and they cried Too soon! too soon!

Young children also play to learn about the world. Why aren't we amused when our toddler drops her food off the high chair for the hundredth time? Because we know about gravity (and we have to clean it up). She, however, is extremely amused, because everything about the universe is new and interesting and open to playful discovery.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.

The tears of childhood fall fast and easily, and evil be to him who makes them flow.

Our procedure has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream. What we need to fear is the archaic formalism and the watery sentiment that obstructs, delays, and defeats the prosecution of crime.

[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

My favorite movie star, far and away, was Errol Flynn. I thought that this guy was the greatest because he always played such heroic roles. He was either the sheriff of Dodge City, or he was Robin Hood, or he was Captain Blood. When I would leave the theater, I'd be about 10 years old I guess ... I would imagine I had a little crooked smile on my face the way Errol Flynn did, and an imaginary sword at my side. I'd be looking around for little girls that might be [attacked] by some bullies.

When first we pay the price of wisdom With innocence, We are too shocked to understand. Then later must we sit and wonder Whether it was worth the cost To know what every one must some day know. And knowing, ever after be afraid, And filled with shame.

A fourteen-year-old boy should never have to ask the questions Who is my mother? and Who are my family? These were not easy questions to formulate in the mind or the mouth because the question comes with others . . . What did I do to deserve this?