#childhood

When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think (puff) my friend, you have had a pretty poor life. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#life

Phoebe realized how very wrong she’d been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she’d grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn’t pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception. ↗

— Jennifer McMahon

#families #family

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water--it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream. I was on the bottom bunk again, listening to his slumber verses. The flap of our childhood letter box opened. Opening the door to the spray of sea. ↗

— Colum McCann

#family #family

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#carry #childhood #never #older #you

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off. ↗

— Peter Straub

#agreed #books #childhood #days #effects

Growing up in the business you have to grow up very fast - you do have a different type of childhood, that has its benefits and it has its drawbacks. ↗

— Jodi Sweetin

#business #childhood #different #drawbacks #fast

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out. ↗

— Donna Tartt

#childhood #essential #first #i #inside

Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of. ↗

— Tom Holt

#few #grow #habits #i #managed

I tried to show him things, but he didn't seem to study what I showed him. Usually, he just put whatever I handed him in his mouth. He would try to eat anything. I fed him Tabasco sauce and he yelled. Having a little brother helped me learn to relate to other people. Being a little brother, Snort learned to watch what he put in his mouth. ↗

— John Elder Robison

#brothers #childhood #children #siblings #life

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room ↗

— Audrey Niffenegger

#happiness #loss #love #memory #mother