#childhood

For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world. ↗

— L.R. Knost

#children #motherhood #parenting #play #age

This was me before I knew about anything hard, when my whole life was packed lunches and art projects and spelling quizzes. ↗

— Nina LaCour

#innocence #memories #art

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn’t. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she’d have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I’m so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#emily #hailsham #kathy #lucy #miss

Dad used to read aloud to us from Dickens and Kipling. My tastes were omnivorous. I read anything I could lay my hands on, but the memory that stays with me is that of my father reading the Jungle Books to us when we were young. Beautiful stories! ↗

— A.B. Guthrie

#childhood-memory #childhood-stories #dickens #interview-transcription #kipling

You can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is so very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren't alone. ↗

— Jeanne McElvaney

#abuse-survivors #childhood-abuse #childhood-sexual-abuse #effects-of-child-abuse #harrietta-s-happenstance

But I think parents aren't teachers anymore. Parents -- or a whole lot of us, at least -- lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child's hero is their mother or father -- or even better, both of them in tandem -- then the rough road of learning and experience is going to be smoothed some. And every little bit of smoothing helps, in this rough old world that wants children to be miniature adults, devoid of charm and magic and the beauty of innocence. ↗

— Robert R. McCammon

#childhood #innocence #parenting #beauty

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives. ↗

— Glenn Beck

#determination #enlightenment #father #grief #mother

Childhood was the past. It couldn't be changed, only remembered. ↗

— Aleatha Romig

#change

A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#existence #memory #change

The distance to the corner shops of childhood becomes unfathomable, immeasurable; the candy bars have changed. And change has changed. ↗

— Ilse Aichinger

#childhood #past #age