#childlike

When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind. It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths. And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space. The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe. Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind. What if, this time, you fall? ↗

— Diana Gabaldon

#fantasy #imagination #science-fiction #time-travel #imagination

I mean, I'm just speaking of my own experiences and my own desires, and it's a kind of a childlike wonder that could really possibly speculate on other dimensions. ↗

— Shirley MacLaine

#could #desires #dimensions #experiences #i

I have heard show business characterized as a refuge for childlike persons in flight from all things harsh and real. ↗

— Carroll O'Connor

#business #characterized #childlike #flight #harsh

Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five. ↗

— John Updike

#appeals #become #child #childlike #count

The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical. ↗

— Maya Lin

#almost #architecture #art #childlike #go

I think there's a part, just a part of comedians, that is still childlike. ↗

— Bob Newhart

#comedians #i #i think #just #part

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#childlike #consuming #emerge #feeling #forms

I navigate through the world with the excitement and determination of a child. That's why I'm an artist. I'd die without an outlet for expression. Unfortunately, more often than not, that childlike energy is the maturity level I bring to many circumstances. ↗

— Kurt Sutter

#bring #child #childlike #circumstances #determination

Who are you?" "I am Death," said the creature. "I thought that was obvious." "But you're so small!" "Only because you are small. You are young and far from your Death, September, so I seem as anything would seem if you saw it from a long way off-very small, very harmless. But I am always closer than I appear. As you grow, I shall grow with you, until at the end, I shall loom huge and dark over your bed, and you will shut your eyes so as not to see me. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#ominous #touching #death

...childish, selfish, immature - that's right, I am. But do you know how much money I make for thinking this way? ↗

— Tom Hanks

#money