Quotes About Childhood

the easiest way for a man to get into your heart was if you imagined what he was like as a child.

He had never brought home a school report and watched his mother smile. The clay ashtray he'd made in kindergarten had been one of sixteen Mrs. Flannigan received on Mother's Day. All the Christmas gifts under the tree were labeled "for a girl" or "for a boy." The evening Will graduated high school, he'd looked out at the crowd of cheering families and seen only strangers.

Enough, I say. Our guests will be arriving shortly, and I would as lief they were left in the dark about this particular strain of insanity in the family that makes you two revert to childhood at the drop of a napkin.

From the open French windows Sylvie watched Maurice erecting a makeshift tennis net, which mostly seemed to involve whacking everything in sight with a mallet. Small boys were a mystery to Sylvie. The satisfaction they gained from throwing sticks or stones for hours on end, the obsessive collection of inanimate objects, the brutal destruction of the fragile world around them, all seemed at odds with the men they were supposed to become.

When she was little they had lived in an old farmhouse too, in the middle of nothing of but landscape.

How wonderfully, joyously, untrammeled he had been then in his happiness. She thought it was fixed for ever, she didn't realize that childhood happiness dissolves away. If she had realized that Archie wasn't going to be that sunny innocent child for ever she would have laid up every moment as treasure.

The roof of the big top was dark blue, spangled with silver stars, and it reminded him of something but he couldn't think what, and then he realized it was the roof - the vault of heaven - in a side chapel at the Catholic church where his mother dragged them three times a day on Sunday when they were very small, until she ran out of energy and let the devil have them. (One Good Turn)

but how could you spoil a child—by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you.

Maurice had disappeared after breakfast. He was a nine-year-old boy and free to go where he pleased with whomsoever he pleased, although he tended to keep to the exclusive company of other nine-year-old boys. Sylvie had no idea what they did but at the end of the day he would return, filthy from head to toe and with some unappetizing trophy, a jar of frogs or worms, a dead bird, the bleached skull of some small creature.

She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is. Literature had fuelled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine of her own narrative.

God giving man life and taking it away is not nearly so bad as God taking away childhood and giving him life.

When a man is small, he loves and hates food with a ferocity which soon dims. At six years old his very bowels will heave when such a dish as creamed carrots or cold tapioca appear before him.

I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.

Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,-- Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.

I close my eyes and can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa.

I moved up over Lower East Side and I was adopted by eight foster parents; I lived all over New York City with these parents, man, till I was about ten years old.

I read The Stinky Cheese Man as an adult. I missed that book when I was a kid. I grew up mostly with books bought at yard sales, picture books from the fifties to 1975, which is really a lucky thing.

When you're a kid and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

When I was a child, I was referred to as the Danny Kaye of the family, because I was always impersonating and mimicking people. I was a song and dance man.

Among adults there are few saved because of sins of the flesh. With the exception of those who die in childhood, most men will be damned.

Why are men reluctant to become fathers? They aren't through being children.

I was about six years old, still Daddy's little girl, even though Daddy couldn't care less about me. How could I expect any man every would?

When you're a kid and you're a superhero lover, the holy trinity is Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, so to be able to take any of those and play with it is a huge joy.

You know, I'm really bad on the computer. I'm really lame, man. I read and hang out with my kids. I've turned into a five year old.