The increasingly thoughtful child can see the whole horribly upset world and would be understandably totally bewildered and deeply troubled by it

Soon never comes soon enough to a young child.

I was one of the many kids in Northern Ireland who grew up in the countryside and had an idyllic childhood well away from the Troubles.

I would trade everything I have to have had a happier childhood.

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

The Unexpected GiftTorn asunder from her slumberin the hour of half past threeThe child knew the tyrannical regimeand followed instinctively.-(slice from Enigmatic Evolution)

Looking’ his last’ upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing ‘she’ could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with a dauntless heart, going...

My mood, as I identify with each of my heroes, resembles what I used to feel when I played alone as a child. Like all children, I liked to play make-believe, to put myself in...

The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun islike a yellow hole. . .

I believe the best service to the child is the service closest to the child, and children who are victims of neglect, abuse, or abandonment must not also be victims of bureaucracy. They deserve our...

Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small...

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are...

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

When I write…I am in the fond armsof a childhood friendupon whose colorful heart I can hang the charcoal drawingsof my woes.

Forever…” The last syllable stretches, just like my grandfather’s dying breath.And the beady, black orbs are no longer eyes but deep, obsidian pits…

I should acquaint the reader with the basic principles of the mythology I adhered to then. I believed . . . that inanimate objects were no less fallible than people. They, too, could be forgetful....

They do not discover anything new after that, they only learn how to understand better and better the secret entrusted to them at the outset; their creative effort goes into an unending exegesis, a commentary...

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is...

it’s definitely best for little children to have a regular life, especially if they can regulate it themselves.

I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms,...

The child is not a citizen of the future; he (sic) is a citizen from the very first moment of life and also the most important citizen because he represents and brings the ‘possible’…a bearer,...

Given that the biggest rise in childhood obesity rates are occurring in children ages 3 to 5 years, we must modify our efforts to place an emphasis on prevention versus intervention.

People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn’t want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this was the Middle Ages, you’d be married and...

I went through the usual stages: imp, rascal, scalawag, whippersnapper. And, of course, after that it’s just a small step to full-blown sociopath.

The monsters were never under our bed, but in the forest our future.

To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.

That’s the beautiful thing about innocence; even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a...

I never thought to ascribe my mother’s emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact...

I think repressing what happened is what saved me in my childhood. I was able to use my imagination to create happy events, but a little girl can carry only so much on her own.

My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

Parent should never forget the great excitement they felt for the birth of a new born into the world.

The greatest memories a person might have in their life is, childhood. It’s really a painful nostalgia.

As my children leave the protected parameters of the bay called childhood and enter the wavier seas of adolescence, I’m starting to get seasick.

There is no land like the land of your childhood.

She said, “Daddy thinks that all the world’s magic is almost evolved out.”I thought of Roebuck Lake, its swamps and sloughs and loblollies and breaks of cypress and cane, its sunken treetops and stobs and...

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...

I came because I’ve spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it’s too late, before we’re...

and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.

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

I feel like my imagination was crafted by Tolkien. He seemed to tap into that childhood intrigue of secret doors and hidden worlds.

It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

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

Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time.

They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.

Sometimes Midas suspected that life was a film with subliminal messages. Things would move along with an acceptable degree of predictability, then be punctuated by some horrible childhood memory.

Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.

Over the years our mother has beaten us with belts, shoes, rulers, extension cords, hair brushes, a wooden spoon, a fly swatter, a toilet brush, wire coat hangers, wooden coat hangers and sometimes one of...

Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the ‘walks’ of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.

Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.