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Childhood Quotes
"Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches and decry the whole month as an orgy of crass commercialism."
14
"Because a child is bound to grow, society is intent upon cultivating the child's mind to mature into a very specific type of responsible person. Children take great pleasure in small things that have no practical purpose in their dreamy world where they can be as wild as wind. Each year a part of the child dies, as it is burden with adult responsibilities."
14
"Children see magic because they look for it."
14
"No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ." "And?" "No damn cat, and no damn cradle."
14
"My father... removed from Kentucky to... Indiana, in my eighth year... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up... Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher... but that was all."
14
"Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up."
14
"Christmas was gluing cotton balls to Santa's beard in Coke ads, sneaking candy canes off the tree daily (that my parents replaced every few nights), enough gift-wrap to wallpaper a room, the terror and delight of knowing a magical being would enter my home while I slept."
13
"No one is ever satisfied where he is....Only the children know what they're looking for."
13
"Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood."
12
"Sunny did not eat the wood, of course, but she chewed on it and pretended it was a carrot, or an apple, or a beef and cheese enchilada, all of which she loved."
12
"I do to miss my childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in simple things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not away from things, or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy."
11
"Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words."
11
"It had seemed to me an elegant nightmare concoction made by adults for adults, to further the aims and fantasies of adults, and what have children to do with such things?"
11
"It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?"
11
"Luis is right there. I point to the corner of the yard, where my little brother is the centre of attention doing imitations of barnyard animals. I have yet to inform him that talent isn't as much of a chick magnet when you get into junior high."
10
"As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded."
10
"Children can create fun out of nothing and when this great talent is lost you become a boring creature which is called adult!"
10
"We were still children and residing in the mosque from morning to evening. We were about to turn into monsters."
10
"When I was learning to creep, my mother set me down on the beach to see what I thought of it. I crawled straight for the coming wave and was just through the wall of green when she caught my heels."
10
"Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own."
10
"When I was about ten, I was very impressed by the way Tarzan could swing through the trees from vine to vine. No one ever told me, 'Don't try this at home.'"
9
"I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults."
9
"Eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness."
9
"Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they werenight-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven.But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehowI put it all together and figured that the food God served causedmultiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night."
9
"Children played at those stories, they dreamed about them. They took them to heart and acted as if to live inside them."
9
"I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?"
9
"And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat" (23)."
9
"No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived are those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book."
9
"Play like a child, because you are still that beautiful child."
9
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