#childhood

When you're a kid, if you watch 'The Jeffersons' with your family at seven o'clock, it seems like a natural phenomenon, like the sun setting. The universe is a strange, strange place when all of a sudden you can't use your glass with the Bionic Woman on it any more. ↗

— Heather O'Neill

#routine #family

I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me. ↗

— Roald Dahl

#life

I'm aware of what kids like because I'm constantly in touch with them. Also, they say that a lot of people who write for children can remember their own childhoods vividly and I can remember my childhood very vividly. ↗

— Eric Wilson

#aware #because #childhood #childhoods #children

That's what makes it so right. Your eyes-- your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That's the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you've seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become. ↗

— Bree Despain

#childhood #dark-divine #mr-barlow #possibility #soul

The warm night claimed her. In a moment it was part of her. She walked on the grass, and her shoes were instantly soaked. She flung up her arms to the sky. Power ran to her fingertips. Excitement was communicated from the waiting trees, and the orchard, and the paddock; the intensity of their secret life caught at her and made her run. It was nothing like the excitement of ordinary looking forward, of birthday presents, of Christmas stockings, but the pull of a magnet - her grandfather had shown her once how it worked, little needles springing to the jaws - and now night and the sky above were a vast magnet, and the things that waited below were needles, caught up in the great demand. ("The Pool") ↗

— Daphne du Maurier

#excitement #excitement-of-youth #night #youth #communication

I knew he was unreliable, but he was fun to be with. He was a child’s ideal companion, full of surprises and happy animal energy. He enjoyed food and drink. He liked to try new things. He brought home coconuts, papayas, mangoes, and urged them on our reluctant conservative selves. On Sundays he liked to discover new places, take us on endless bus or trolley rides to some new park or beach he knew about. He always counseled daring, in whatever situation, the courage to test the unknown, an instruction that was thematically in opposition to my mother’s. ↗

— E.L. Doctorow

#father #courage

In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions. ↗

— Laurie Matthew

#child-abuse #childabuse #childhood-abuse #crime #death

FËDOR Mikhailovich Dostoevski, the Russian novelist, said one time that, "One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education." I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#childhood-memory #childhood-trauma #lunatic #education

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. ↗

— C.M. Stunich

#children #education #inspirational #lessons #moral-responsibility

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood. ↗

— Gerald Durrell

#corfu #magic #merlin #family