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Quote by Philippe Besson

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Lie With Me

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Philippe Besson

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“What in heaven’s name do you mean?’ “=Not the name of heaven. Just the place you come from.= “‘You don’t know anything about the place I come from.’ “=It is true I don’t know the place. But I know a great deal about the place now, after learning to know you. I know what kind of stories—not the stories themselves, mind you, but the kind of stories—they tell their children. I know what the children are led to expect from the world. Fair treatment. A happy life. Even that question you ask comes out of the mountains.= “‘Is there anything wrong with that? You make it look stupid.’ “=There is nothing wrong, and there is something wrong. There is nothing wrong with making a place where children can be safe. I can hardly imagine it myself, but it sits on the edge of my vision like a small sun. It’s a blinding glimpse of something. Safety. So very odd. And I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a modicum of safety, though I think my way one at least learns how to react quickly. But there is something wrong in the kind of complacency…= his sign is complicated: a cat after cream, a fat despot =…which lets you think you have a right to a happy life just because you can think of the idea.= “‘I don’t agree with you. Everyone should be able to be complacent in that way!’ As she speaks she illustrates the way by repeating the cat-with-cream sign. ‘But that other, that arrogance, I don’t think we are arrogant, in the mountains, like that—do you?’ “=Arrogant? I don’t know. Arrogant? A curious word. The arrogance of privilege. You had safety. That’s a privilege.=”

ChildhoodAbuseSafetyPrivilegeTrauma
Book:Black Wine
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“Children know. They breathe it in early, for there's no unknowing the difference between nannies, cleaners, below stairs people and the family upstairs. Children are the go-betweens, one foot in each world, and yet they know very well from the earliest age where they belong, where their destiny lies or, to put it crudely, who pays whom. From a young age their loyalties are torn, betrayal of both inevitable, colluding in complaints with gossip passing each way, upstairs and down...love that nanny, au pair, housekeeper or any paid employee - but never forever. Never equally. Tiny hands steeped young in the essence of class and caste.”

ChildhoodClass System
Book:An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals
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“When you were a child, you tell me, you lived under a tin roof, and whenever it rained, beneath its slanting body, you’d sit and listen to the millions of pouring droplets. In them you found tiny signs of the world, a place where you could make sense of things through a divine sound that poured over you. This sound, you say, cloaked your entire childhood, and underneath this sound were the memories of your unfledged years. She seems to have cut ties with time; a minute to her would be a meaningless sound, an hour a gentle breeze. She seems to glide through time, as opposed to everyone else who scurries behind it; perhaps her relationship with time has resulted in mutual indifference, for they have lived with one another for so long that they’ve gone their separate ways; but they respect each other, her and time, from a metaphysical distance.”

ChildhoodRainMemory
Book:Birds on a Carousel
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“Children's freedom to roam and to socialize informally has been severely curtailed; their school environment has become more prisonlike, their physical safety protected at the expense of their education, development, and fun. The loss of children's freedom to roam may be regarded as an unfortunate late stage in the sacralization of childrearing.”

Childhood
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“However, this saving grace can be stunted. We can stop at this point where we will be actually saved; but, we will not be working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). The person can live and die only at the stage of being saved and Christ will not be formed in him. If this happens, we will be infants in Christ; we will live a very superficial Christian life and a life that is full of struggles and conflicts. Paul calls it a life according to the flesh and in other places in the Bible it is called the state of spiritual childhood.”

SpiritualSpiritChristChildhoodFleshChristian LifeFormationStagesPaul The Apostle
Book:The Inner Man & the Formation of Christ
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“Sadly, I worshipped my childhood, I was fragile and all-powerful at the same time. I had the right to rule in a world created for my pleasure, which was enough for me. What was real interested me not at all for it did not burden me. I had the time to watch the most unenterprising insect, to make a beetle go round and round, to make a string of ants climb up a stem, I had time to count my steps, and to count the numbers of stamens in the heart of a daisy. I knew all about dates, odors, shapes.”

Childhood
Book:Inside
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