CAIAPHAS! FOREVER! CAI—”And with a piercing whistle it ended as his eardrums burst.

I live 50 miles from London and we’ve got some of the highest levels of teenage and childhood poverty in the country. It’s disgusting. Just because it’s a rural area, it gets forgotten.

The books we read in childhood don’t exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these books as...

Carelessness was once something to be owned. They wore it around their necks as they joined the springtime breeze while ducking in and out of the forest believing their fairy tale.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting...

What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world....

Moral obligations verses Legal obligations. Legally, you must abide by the laws of the land or face the consequences of being fined, imprisoned or both. Moral obligations tend to lean more towards a spiritual nature...

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are...

…for if we try to go on protecting them we prevent them from growing up to be ordinary, confident adults, capable of looking after themselves.

I can remember staring at the orphanage and feeling envy.

You’d be surprised how many childhoods each of us has.

Vreau să trăiţi din plin, viu, agitat, nervos, liber aceşti ani neasemuiţi, aceşti ani în care visul şi fantezia nu ţin seama de niciun obstacol, în care orice bătaie a inimii se dăruie întregii lumi.

the cold winds of insecurity… hadn’t shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still...

Paul is my childhood idol and when sober is a wonderful person.

Dwight Eisenhower said that from the beginning, his mother and father operated on an assumption that set the course of his life – that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child...

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have...

My childhood taught me nothing… zero.

When you’re a kid all you want to do is be somewhere else.

what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer — and what trees and seasons smelled like —...

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.

Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.

[…]make sure you raise your children by having them play in their studies, and don’t use force.

Podré olvidar muchas experiencias de la vida, pero no las de la infancia. Siempre recuerdo aquel verso que dice: ¡Oh, infancia! ¡Oh, mi amiga! Y lo que importa en él es lo que no se...

While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to...

The things that have been told us in our childhoodAre not so fragile.

Every Saturday morning, first thing before breakfast, his parents held conferences with their children requiring them to answer two questions put to each of them: 1. What have you learned that is true (and how...

Have you ever loved someone so intensely, so entirely ,that it’s painful to be apart from them? I’m not talking about being in a long-distance relationship or even a particularly painful case of unrequited love....

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

…I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl — a cousin I think — having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew [my grandfather] would pass near four...

Love may not be enough to wake a child in the morning, dress him, and get him to school, then to feed him at night, bathe him, and put him to bed. Still, can any...

You’re a kid,’ said Alexandra. ‘There is no just about it. Only adults say just a kid and what the heck do they know about anything? Have you looked at their world lately?

magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve...

her daughter”.

What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child?

Somehow, the days of summer with their glimmering enchantment of dancing ladybugs and sailing clouds had faded into grey. Maddie’s heart had somehow faded with it.

For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the...

Hal finds he rather envies a man who feels he has something to explain his being fucked up, parents to blame it on.

A preserved childhood is better than a repaired adulthood

I carry a disposable camera. It takes me back to my childhood, when you had to develop your film and wait to see what pictures you got.

an unhappy childhood.” Redwing had enjoyed a fine time growing up, but he wondered if this whole expedition was unfolding more like a novel, and would be blamed on one person, one character, the guy...

You see, when you’re young and foolish it doesn’t matter where you may be, you always think that you’ll be happier somewhere else.

The last time you were happy about nothing; the first time you were afraid about nothing. Which came first?

The circumstances surrounding your birth are not as important as the opportunity to live life.

We want our children to have a childhood that’s magical and enriched, but I’ll bet that your best childhood memories involve something you were thrilled to do by yourself. These are childhood’s magic words: “I...

The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and...

Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice

Your responsibility as an adult is accept your childhood and make your own choice of life.

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and...