Quotes About Childhood

THAT BEGAN a spell of time when the high point of my days was the sugar on my cereal.

Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us that children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by segregating human beings in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit to the authority of a schoolteacher.

The bourgeoisie who could afford to eliminate 'social death' by avoiding retirement, created 'childhood' to keep their young under control.

Crescere nella condizione di bambino significa essere condannati ad un conflitto disumano tra la propria coscienza di sé e il ruolo imposto da una società che sta attraversando la propria età scolare.

I think my mom threatened to put me up for adoption a few times.

My father always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect.

Als kind had je dat vaak. Je werd 's morgens wakker en de muren van je kamer stonden verkeerd om je heen. In gedachten moest je de kamer een slag draaien zodat alles weer klopte en je op kon staan, de deur door, de dag in.

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all.... It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.

The distant father. This is the father who was physically in the home but was disengaged. He may have been depressed. Or maybe he never learned to show emotion because of painful experiences in his own life such as post-traumatic stress disorder or physical abuse. This type of dad finds it very difficult to show affection to a child or to say, "I love you." So the child, who is starved for healthy affection, will assume that he or she is not loved.

Compassion speaks with a slight accent. She was a vulnerable child, miserable in school, cold, shy … In ninth grade she was befriended by Courage. Courage lent Compassion bright sweaters, explained the slang, showed her how to play volleyball.

there is for many a poverty of play and cultural life because, although the person had a place for erudition, there was a relative failure on the part of those who constitute the child's world of persons to introduce cultural elements at the appropriate phases of the person's personality development.

A poor child knew what it meant to be poor. We didn't ask for much, and sometimes we didn't even ask.

Caro bambino, mi viene da scrivere. Ma forse no, caro giovanotto. Sei morto così giovane. [...] Sinceramente preferisco pensarti bambino, prima del tradimento, dell'odio e dell'assassinio. Preferisco pensarti taciturno e gentile, in quella capanna riscaldata dal fiato della mucca e dell'asino, per niente disturbato dalla povertà del tuo giaciglio di paglia, fra ranocchini che saltano, il rumore della pioggia sul tetto abbozzato alla meglio da tuo padre e le gonne sudice di tua madre.

Maturity - among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

I'm six. 1974. Somebody's New York apartment, white rug, many people. They say "schmatte." They say "schmooze," they say "schwarze." They wear bead necklaces, interesting belts, plastic white sunglasses propped on their heads. Nixon's resigning on black-and-white TV. He says nobody gave him anything except a dog.

I've always wanted to be an actress, ever since I was a little girl. I always played the mom and I played my sister as the daughter. I wanted to be an actress on television and movies instead of just around the house.

That was really cool. I got to kiss a little boy. I was 7 and he was 10, and his name is Thomas Curtis. He was the first boy I've ever kissed in my entire life and he was three years older than me.

The child tortures the fly because he has the power to do so, and had not yet learned how mercifully to kill.

We always watched horror movies. As a child I remember sitting up into the early hours of the morning watching horror movies with my father. I still watch horror movies and read horror novels because they remind me of "home." Nostalgia, you could say.

The hardest thing in the world is making a kid happy after he's been circumcised.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

We didn't chase her with scissors

Boy, those were