Quotes About Innocence

The world, simply enough, became as beautiful as it does to many children waking on a summer morning.

The most sophisticated people I know--inside they're all children. We never really loose a certain sense we had when we were kids.

Fuzzy and ideological definitions of terrorism just make it easier to kill people. When you know your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that's terrorism. And it must be clearly named as unacceptable—no matter who does it (individuals, groups, or states), whatever the weapons, the expressed intentions, or political justifications.

May I whisper in your ear from my heart so you'll clearly hear. There are people so dear… They're like children… Naked in a cold world… Beautiful children In an old world. May I take you away from the evils of today to the dreams of tomorrow? You know that Heaven has no sorrow. We know that Heaven has no tomorrow. Hear the sound of the magic drums… Hearts are beating for the Sun, Sending Evil on the run. Now watch the wind…

She has the devil in her eye And holds an angel in her heart. She'll get you wrapped around her little finger And tear your mind a million miles apart. Her kiss is a cup of sunshine.

Life was just a tire swing. 'Jambalaya' was the only song I could sing. Blackberry pickin', eatin' fried chicken, And I never knew a thing about pain. Life was just a tire swing.

Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was.

I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative

In Coffeeville, Miss., at 6 p.m., there was a golden light and a child swinging in it, swinging from a big tree, over a big lawn, back and forth in front of a big airy house. To be a white middle-class child in a small southern town must be on certain levels the most golden way for a child to live in the United States.

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.

When Tracy was three she looked up at her aunt and asked, Why don't we have dessert for breakfast?

But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair. I never did, snapped Loki crossly. Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

We have travelled into the past and returned to find that our present is not quite the same as we left it. Atticus Finch will never again be the white knight we once thought him. And yet the mockingbird still sings — no longer a song of innocence, but maybe one of experience; a song that combines sorrow, forgiveness — and, ultimately, a kind of hope.

Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn't win.

My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.

One person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.

Once, in second grade, Kate drew a picture of a firefighter with a halo above his helmet. She told her class that I would only be allowed to go to Heaven, because if I went to Hell, I'd put out all the fires. ~Brian Fitzgerald

It just goes to show you: every baby is born beautiful. It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.

newborns reminded her of tiny buddhas

Babies are such blank slates. They don't come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don't like. They don't come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver. I wonder how long it takes before the polish given by nature gets worn off by nurture.

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack.

When you look into your baby's eyes," Lacy said softly, "you see everything you hope they can be… not everything you wish they won't become.