Quotes About Childhood

Cómo se acordará? ¿Como yo, con recuerdos de recuerdos, o directamente, como quien ve la propia cara en el espejo? ¿Será posible que él, que sólo tenía cuatro años, posea la imagen, y que a mí, en cambio, que tengo registradas tantas noches, tantas noches, tantas noches, no me quede nada?

La infancia es a veces un paraíso perdido, pero otras, es un infierno de mierda.

Siempre quise un altillo. Cuando tenía nueve años, cuando tenía doce…siempre quise un altillo para escaparme. ¿De quien? Nunca lo supe. Francamente quisiera saber si todos están seguros de quien escapan. Nadie lo sabe

You know what the aristocracy is like. They turn their children over to the care of nurses and governesses from the day they are born and have little to do with them after that.

I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child. (ix)

There is no growth without real feeling. Children not loved for who they are do not learn how to love themselves. Their growth is an exercise in pleasing others, not in expanding through experience. As adults, they must learn to nurture their own lost child.

She believes her parents do not love her less, only that before, she had a child's notion of love that did not include the small treacheries of delusion and fear and shame.

What feeling is so nice as a child's hand in yours So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp.

truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old, I'm a five-year-old, I'm a thirty-seven-year-old, I'm a fifty-year-old. I've been through all of them, and I know what it's like. I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own.23

One thing that is almost always said to me is, I grew up with you. They are meeting me and feel that they actually grew up with me. I was with them during their play hours and thinking hours. I was a part of their childhoods. That's one of the most amazing things.

People who were abused as children tend to get angry and strike out at the world. People who were neglected tend to feel defeated and withdraw from the world. People who were not given guidance tend to lack confidence and self-reliance. Each pathway leads to different forms of self-defeat.

People's early experiences shape how crazy or how sane they become.

Think of the sanest people in your life, the people you'd describe as poised, wise, emotionally intelligent, kind, or good. In my experience, most of these people had childhoods that made them strong and resilient.

This insight works especially well for men who long to hear their fathers say the magic words, "I'm proud of you, son." Men who, as kids, did not have the admiration of their dads feel a gaping deprivation; those who did have it long for sweet boyhood moments they can never recapture. That is why, if you want to see a grown man cry, get him to talk about his father.

Since self-defeating behavior goes back to the childhood experience of being alone and defenseless, it is easier to overcome it in adulthood if you get support from other people. The actual role your helpers play doesn't matter. They can assist you directly, provide moral support or agree to hold you accountable for the changes you vow to make. What's important is that you know you're not alone. This will strengthen your confidence and determination.

From a very early age, my wife and I told our son that there are times and places for everything. I told him, look, when you're in class, you have to be quiet and listen to your teacher, but when you go out to the playground, you can scream and be silly.

There is something unspeakably consoling in one's own smile. In that reflection, you can discern the face of yourself as a child and the face of yourself as a corpse. And in this moment, all the fundamental antinomies are reconciled--the sacred and the profane, the analyst and the analysand, the celebrated success and the abject failure. The pilot and the passenger. Writer and reader. Fiction and nonfiction. Past and present. And the mind that abides and the mind that is gone.

As psychologist James Hillman reminds us, "Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

In the Boston of my childhood, willpower was all-important. If you wanted something badly enough, you could have it. This maxim included curing yourself of paralysis.

Yet historical roots influence contemporary behavior and decisions for a city just as childhood experiences remain crucial to adult attitudes for an individual.

When you walk, cherish the silence. Let your mind wander. The child within picks up crayons & begins to write.

I, on the other hand, hoped Ava would never grow up. In my eyes, the fact that she didn't yet know what words meant, and had no concept of herself as something distinct from anything else, made her the greatest show on earth.

Stop counting crayons, just draw pictures.

Some of the best times I've spent in Colorado have been in the backcountry with my mom and siblings, and more recently, with my own kids. That is why I'm concerned to see today's kids spending more time browsing the Internet than exploring nature.