#childhood

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age. ↗

— John Gardner

#introspection #age

Childhood is this time of magic and monsters; hoping for one and fearing the other... The worst part of being a kid is discovering which one exists... So, I chose to believe in magic. ↗

— Thomm Quackenbush

#fear #hope #magic #monsters #dreams

tis true, 'tis pity, and 'tis pity, 'tis true.' what delightful things we might do were it not for Mrs. Harmon Andrews! ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#anne-shirley #childhood-favorites #dreams

Whatever I learned, Whatever I knew, Seems like those faded years of childhood that flew, Away in some dilemma, Always in some confusion, The purpose of this life, Seems like an illusion! ↗

— Mehek Bassi

#breakups #childhood #confusion #dilemma #experience

I could hear you, talking to the daffodils and tulips, whispering to the fairies that lived inside their petals. Each separate flower had a different family inside it. ↗

— Lucy Christopher

#family

Despite being what would now be called a deprived child in a one parent family, I did not grow up with an urge to smash windows or to bash old ladies over the head in order to steal handbags. ↗

— Eva Hart

#growing-up #humor #life #single-parenting #family

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#humor #writing #humor

The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went to the moon, I went with him. He fought Tomb Raiders in Egypt, I fought alongside him. He rescued his elephant girlfriend from Ivory Hunters on the Savanna, I coordinated the getaway. I loved that goddamn Elephant and I loved being his friend. In a childhood full of unhappiness and rage, Babar is one of the few pleasant memories that I have. Me and Babar, kicking some motherfucking ass. ↗

— James Frey

#childhood #elephants #reading #imagination

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things. But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down. And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story. ↗

— Carolyn Bramhall

#amnesia #amnesiac #childhood-abuse #dissociation #dissociative-identity-disorder

Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. ↗

— Betty Smith

#imagination #imagination