908 quotes found
“(An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of dis...”
“A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he com...”
“I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.”
“Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.”
“Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.”
“Brushing my little teeth every morning of my childhood, I stood on my tippy toes, leaned over the sink and said to myself that when I am a big girl I will see from this high.Today I did the same th...”
“Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor futurelessens . . . . Superabundant existencewells in my heart.”
“Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won'...”
“Once upon a time she had liked to dance. When she had been about the same age as the little brunette out there who kept lifting her dress up over her head. Now that was living. Just lift your dress...”
“Courage lays within easy reach of a child who knows nothing of how easily understanding can unravel, leaving a set of rules that apply to nothing, and an empty heart.”
“Work, love, courage and hope,Make me good and help me cope!”
“Suddenly I was struck motionless: I was living through the first chapter of a novel in which I was the heroine; she was still almost a child, but we, too, were growing up.”
“I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliat...”
“What, after all, is more real to us than the geography of our childhoods?”
“He started to wonder if maybe they had been raptured while he was in school. He always worried the Lord would show up when he wasn't around. Or when he was on the toilet, taking care of a number two.”
“And so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, "Father, what is sexsin?"He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said ...”
“You know, it's pretty easy reading this book to see why I was angry and confused for all those years. I lived my life being told different stories: some true, some lies and I still don't know which...”
“I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw...”
“Thats the trouble with memories: everything seems much more fantastical with a childhood lens to filter out the limitations of reality.”
“There's the parent you want and the parent you have.”
