Quotes About Childhood

Little Miss MuffetSat on a tuffet,Eating some curds and whey.Along came a spider,And sat down beside her,And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Jack, be nimble,Jack, be quick,Jack, jump over the candlestick.

What are little boys made of?Snips and snails, and puppy dogs' tails;That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?Sugar and spice, and everything nice;That's what little girls are made of.

Curlylocks, Curlylocks,Wilt thou be mine?Thou shalt not wash dishesNor yet feed the swine,But sit on a cushionAnd sew a fine seam,And feed upon strawberries,Sugar and cream.

There was an old womanLived under a hill;And if she's not gone,She lives there still.

Tom, Tom, the piper's son,He learned to play when he was young.But all the tune that he could playWas "Over the hills and far away."

Une pendule inlocalisable perdue parmi les ténèbres des armoires laissait s'égoutter des heures étouffées dans un quelconque couloir lointain encombré de malles de bois précieux et conduisant à des chambres raides et humides où le cadavre de Proust flottait encore, éparpillant dans l'air raréfié un relent usé d'enfance.

sempre que passamos por esta fotografia a minha mulher a demorar-se numa espécie de sorriso voltado na direcção da infância

As I walked towards travel, that illusion of liberation, I strangely felt myself walking back into childhood.

If you want to make someone cry, " Bruno said slowly, "you give them an onion to chop. But if you want them to feel sad, you cook them the dish their mother used to cook for them when they were small...

Like the little girl who says to a little boy, "Are you a Presbyterian?" And he says, "No, we belong to another abomination!

It reminds me of the Irish prisoner who dug a tunnel under the prison wall and managed to escape. He comes out right in the middle of a school playground where little children are playing. Of course, when he emerges from the tunnel he can't restrain himself anymore and begins to jump up and down, crying, "I'm free, I'm free, I'm free! A little girl there looks at him scornfully and says, "That's nothing. I'm four.

Every child has a god in him. Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil. Children come to my school, little devils, hating the world, destructive, unmannerly, lying, thieving, bad-tempered. In six months they are happy, healthy children who do no evil.

He was a just a boy. They all were. Even the largest of them.

Marie-Laure smiles, and he laughs a pure, contagious laugh, one she will try to remember all her life, father and daughter turning in circles on the sidewalk in front of their apartment house, laughing together while snow sifts through the branches above.

We return to the places we're from; we trample faded corners and pencil in new lines. 'You've grown up so fast,' Robert's mother tells him at breakfast, at dinner. 'Look at you." But she's wrong, thinks Robert. You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come back and dig it up.

Now the piano makes a long, familiar run, the pianist playing different scales with each hand--what sounds like three hands, four--the harmonies like steadily thickening peals on a strand, and Werner sees six-year-old Jutta lean toward him, Frau Elena kneading bread in the background, a crystal radio in his lap, the cords of his soul not yet severed.

We used to pick berries by the Ruhr. My sister and me.

and Werner sees six-year-old Jutta lean toward him, Frau Elena kneading bread in the background, a crystal radio in his lap, the cords of his soul not yet severed.

But seven-year-old Werner seems to float. He is undersized and his ears stick out and he speaks with a high, sweet voice; the whiteness of his hair stops people in their tracks. Snowy, milky, chalky. A color that is the absence of color. Every morning he ties his shoes, packs newspaper inside his coat as insulation against the cold, and begins interrogating the world.

It was enough when Werner was a boy, wasn't it? A world of wildflowers blooming up through the shapes of rusty cast-off parts. A world of berries and carrot peels and Frau Elena's fairy tales. Of the sharp smell of tar, and trains passing, and bees humming in the window boxes. String and spit and wire and a voice on the radio offering a loom on which to spin his dreams.

Werner and his younger sister, Jutta, are raised at Children's House, a clinker-brick two-story orphanage on Viktoriastrasse whose rooms are populated with the coughs of sick children and the crying of newborns and battered trunks inside which drowse the last possessions of deceased parents: patchwork dresses, tarnished wedding cutlery, faded ambrotypes of fathers swallowed by the mines.

Bernd molders in the corner. Jutta moves through the world somewhere, watching shadows disentangle themselves from night, watching minders limp past in the dawnn. It was enough when Werner was a boy, wasn't it? A world of wildflowers blooming up through the shapes of rusty cast-off parts. A world of berries and carrot peels ad Frau Elena's fairy tales. Of the sharp smell of tar, and trains passing, and a voice on the radio offering a loom on which to spin his dreams.