Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Victor Valente

Quote by Victor Valente

“While, in adult life, people’s beliefs and desires are always clashing against the relentless reality, for children, the boundary between believing and being is easily transgressed. Protected from the real world by adults, children can move between realism and fantasy without suffering consequences. Peter Pan knows this well: “I just want always to be a little boy and to have fun.”

Quote by Victor Valente

Work

Author

Victor Valente

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Victor Valente. more

You May Also Like

“Did Abel used to threaten you and Dad with El Cuco?" Her uncle nodded. "Did she ever say what he looked like?" He shook his head. "That used to scare me more, not knowing what he was. Childhood imaginations are powerful things." "Not as powerful as a mother's threat." Javier heard his voice like it was coming from someone else. He had planned to stay quiet. Now the light beam was on him again. "Nothing is more powerful than that, son.”

“You don't know, Javier, you can't know what it's like to see your baby, your only baby, slipping away. You have all these hopes when you hold this perfect swaddled creature in your arms, you imagine academic awards, nice little friends, Ivy League colleges, marriage to a girl from a good family, grandchildren. And then one day, you realize you have no control, that any control you thought yo had was an illusion. You realize you don't know how to save them as they teeter on the edge. We were all feeling that, all of the mothers. And then I found you with all those...drugs." She shuddered. "That night, we would've tried anything to get you all back. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he came. In order to see you, I would've sold my soul to el diablo if he were there that night. I guess he was" She looked at the floor and started to cry. "We just wanted to scare you. He was a fairy-tale monster. Never, never in a million years did we expect him to come, for him to...”

“For a non-Korean speaker it might seem strange that Koreans refer to their own children with the derogatory term for “a child of a beast”, but there’s two meanings in how Koreans use 새끼 saekki for their child - they’re being derogatory by admitting that we’re nothing but animals, but they’re also saying that being nothing but an animal is the highest honor of all. The most sophisticated and profound emotion a human can feel is the most common and bonds us to everything that has ever lived and reproduced: love of child. People who have kids like to say there’s no way to describe what it feels like to have a child to someone who doesn’t have a child, I feel the same way but I also don’t. Having a baby is strange in that it is something you’ve never felt before, but it’s also the only thing you’ve ever felt before. Having a baby makes you feel love and fear death, but it’s not because those things are taught to you, they are reactivated in you. Having a baby isn’t learning, it’s realising you’ve already known everything all along.”