They thought more before nine a.m. than most people thought all month. I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, ‘Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.’ And...

And then, on the final day, it was time for the faux Underground Railroad. This is the part that no one believes. “No adult would ever do that,” they say. “You can’t be remembering that...

And that’s when I heard the whisper in my heart’s ear: “It’s not about your childhood. It’s about who you are!

Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person’s childhood is being carefully held like...

In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called...

Gdje su zlatne ptice ljudskih snova, preko kojih se to bezbrojnih mora i vrletnih planina do njih dolazi? Da li nam se ta duboka čežnja djetinje nerazumnosti posigurno javlja samo kao tužni znak izvezen na...

When Uncle W. G. held out his hand to take my money, I dropped the dead mouse in his hand.

Amidst the chaos of the cities, a part of you always yearns for the silence of the woods.

This whole, crazy fucking business can be reduced to one little word, one word explains it all. I’m going to give you the benefit of my experience and share that word with you, buck. It’s...

There would remain no sign of you ever having played in this house. Your childhood is going to be swept under a camel-skin rug and elevators are going to be built over the lake we...

I walked through the house to the back porch and found the screen door covered top to bottom, side to side, with cats meowing for food. . . . They were so thick on the...

But we left camp after a while and we was driving in a real spooky place cause all the roads up near camp are dark and in the woods and we had to drive for...

By the time we began to understand enough about what the world to ask the right questions, our visit is over, and someone else is visiting, asking the same questions.

Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn’t raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things

The scent of your asshole smells like childhood memories. I mean it would, if I grew up in New Jersey.

Alison’s grandfather told her,’To err is human, to forgive divine

Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.

First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert’s been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her,...

In the tell-me-again times, (…) when my mom and I lived in a little apartment in a little building downtown, I slept in her bed. It was a raft on the ocean, a cloud, a...

It must have been an endless breathing in: between the wish to know and the wish to praise there was no seam.

Sometimes you have to travel back in time, skirting the obstacles, in order to love someone.

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes...

…some nights I’d sneak out and listen to the radio in my Dad’s old Chevy – children need solitude – they don’t teach that in school…

Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby...

That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn’t want any of those things. I didn’t want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life...

…when I was a kid, Toronto streets were deserted and quiet on Sundays, except for the sound of church bells I stood on the sidewalk one December listening to the Christmas bells – I’ve never...

My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

The morning heat had already soaked through the walls, rising up from the floor like a ghost of summers past.

…If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum…

…my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks,...

My buddies and I wrote letters to hundreds of pofessional players, asking for autographed photos. Occasionally one responded, and to get a photo in th email was a reason to strut.

The thing I miss most from home, is having a home.

Never stop screaming, playing and laughing, it’s part of our childhood wich will always be with us.

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were...

The wonders of a child can only be understood by the child.

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.”Aristotle

That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things...