quotations about childhood
Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
The rustling of a wild-bird's wings,
A star, a flower, a gush of rain,
The sight of sad or joyous things,
Oft makes me seem a child again:
With voiceless eloquence they come,
Bright phantoms of my childhood's home.
ROSA VERTNER JEFFREY
"My Childhood's Home"
The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
FRANK MCCOURT
Angela's Ashes
And where, on earth, dwell hope and truth?
In childhood's uncorrupted heart;
Alas! too soon to guileless youth
The world doth its dark code impart!
ANNE S. BUSHBY
"The Morn of Life"
Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood.
GENE WOLFE
The Book of the Short Sun
It was strange how some of childhood's words and ways fell at the wayside and were left behind, while others clamped tight and rode for life, growing the heavier to carry as time passed.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
When you are a child, there is joy. There is laughter. And most of all, there is trust. Trust in your fellows. When you are an adult ... then comes suspicion, hatred, and fear.
PETER DAVID
Tigerheart
Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.
RICHARD PAUL EVANS
The Gift
Childhood is a meadow
For angels without wings
Childhood is a meadow
Of toys an' rose-covered swings
With singing brooks
For laughing hearts at play
And a fence made of rainbows
To keep every care away
PERRY COMO
"Childhood Is a Meadow"
Childhood is like a mist in so many ways. A mist in which a you is moving to become another you.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"A Sketch of the Past,", Moments of Being
They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.
HEATHER O'NEILL
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Plans made in the nursery
Can change the course of history
DEPECHE MODE
"Shouldn't Have Done That"
You don't know the things in your childhood that influence you. You can't possibly know them. People today try to analyze the early environment and the reasons for something that happened, but if you look at children of the same family -- children who have identical parents, go to identical schools, have an almost identical upbringing, and yet who have totally different experiences and neuroses -- you realize that what influences the children is not so much the obvious externals as their emotional experiences. Of course any psychiatrist knows that.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Atlantic, Oct. 15, 1997
My childhood is like a part I once had in a play. I was the actress but not the author and now I can't remember any of my lines, although the stage sets are still so vivid that they dominate my dreams.
JOY COWLEY
Classical Music
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE
A Circle of Quiet
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
J.M. BARRIE
Peter Pan
That unpaced corridor which I called childhood, which was not living but rather some projection of the lightless womb itself.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom