Childhood Quotes - Page 23

• Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and ... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns except as the agent of a foreign power.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Country, Agents, Return

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• Before seeing Truffaut 's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity a poetic comedy that's really funny.

  Pauline Kael

  Children, Simple, Small Changes

  Pauline Kael (1980). “When the lights go down”, Henry Holt & Co

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• I started writing poetry when I was six. I had this teacher who didn't believe the poems I'd bring in were mine because they were dark and sad. But I wrote about what I experienced in my childhood.

  Mariah Carey

  Teacher, Believe, Writing

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• The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other.

  Woody Allen

  People, Different, World

  "Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker". Interview with Helene Zuber, www.spiegel.de. June 20, 2005.

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• I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.

  Jack Kerouac

  Mean, People, Vision

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• A real farmer. He spent his childhood in the wheat, and his marriage in the hay.

  Mae West

  Real, Hay, Wheat

  "Fictional character: Marlo Manners". "Sextette", www.imdb.com. 1978.

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• How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.

  Lyman Abbott

  Children, Mean, Appreciate

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• The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.

  Edward Teller

  Eye, Lenses, Magnifying

  Edward Teller, Judith Schoolery (2009). “Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics”, p.5, Basic Books

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• I remember, I remember how my childhood fleeted by. The mirth of its December, and the warmth of its July.

  Winthrop Mackworth Praed

  July, Mirth, December

  Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1852). “Lillian: And Other Poems”, p.248

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• Old age is second childhood.

  Aristophanes

  Age, Old Age

  Nubes ( The Clouds), l.1417.

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• Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self, the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood.

  Theodor Adorno

  Character, Self, Humanity

  Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno (2002). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.26, Stanford University Press

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• The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Biographies, Prelude, Composer

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• The arts were a big part of my childhood. We went to the theatre and opera a lot as a family. We were not at all wealthy, but it was at a time when the arts were publicly funded and there were free tickets available. For someone like myself who wasn't that academically inclined, it was a great escape.

  Sarah Jessica Parker

  Art, Theatre, Opera

  "The Family Stone - Sarah Jessica Parker interview" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential - we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today - well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew?

  Edmund White

  Memories, Thinking, Roots

  "A Boy's Own Story". Book by Edmund White, E.P. Dutton, Chapter Four, p. 92, 1982.

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• All that stuff about my father and my childhood is interesting up to a certain point, but I kind of capsized with the family drama a long time ago. Now I want to get away from that. Not that I won't return to it, but a certain element has been exhausted, and it feels like why regurgitate all this stuff?

  Sam Shepard

  Drama, Father, Interesting

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• On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today, my school motto: "I will try my outmost". This is my promise to all of the people of Britain and now let the work of change begin.

  Gordon Brown

  School, People, Promise

  Gordon Brown's First Speech as Prime Minister, www.telegraph.co.uk. June 27, 2007.

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• Childhood, at its best, is a perpetual adventure, in the truest sense of that overtaxed word: a setting forth into trackless lands that might have come to existence the instant before you first laid eyes on them.

  Michael Chabon

  Adventure, Eye, Land

  Michael Chabon (2012). “Maps and Legends”, p.21, HarperCollins UK

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• I like to keep people around me like the guys I have on the road with me, three of them were childhood friends of mine when I was growing up in Scotland. They don't look at me any different than when we were in primary school. So it's good to keep people like that around you. I think if you surround yourself with good honest people, they will tell you what to hear when you need to hear it.

  Johnny Reid

  Growing Up, School, Thinking

  "Johnny Reid headlining Fredericton's Maritime Countryfest". "Information Morning Fredericton" with Terry Seguin, www.cbc.ca. June 20, 2015.

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• I think maybe because I moved a lot in my childhood, I'm a little bit of a gypsy by nature.

  Carla Gugino

  Thinking, Littles, Gypsy

  "A little white lie made Carla Gugino Troop Beverly Hills' tallest scout". Interview with Erik Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2015.

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• Some people take the spelling bee very seriously. These people are called "parents of children in the spelling bee." They're trying to make up for their own childhood of crushed dreams and misspelled words.

  Craig Ferguson

  Dream, Children, People

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• No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything.

  Sue Grafton

  World, Achieve, Driven

  "At Home With: Sue Grafton; a Is for Alter Ego". Interview with Enid Nemy, www.nytimes.com. August 04, 1994.

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• If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.

  Jose Saramago

  Pigs, Littles, Poverty

  Interview with Edney Silvestre, 2007.

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• Even if you've gone through an average childhood, you have girlfriends who get pregnant and then have to choose whether or not to have a child. And this stuff certainly makes you think about what you're taking on. I certainly want to have children, but I could never do it until I felt I loved myself enough, and wanted to bring someone into the world because I had some kind of security.

  Laura Dern

  Girlfriend, Children, Thinking

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• How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

  Katherine Dunn

  Evil, Darkness, Age

  Katherine Dunn (2011). “Geek Love: A Novel”, p.150, Vintage

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• I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.

  Dido Armstrong

  Decision, Stories, Able

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