“As children get older, this incidental outdoor activity--say, while waiting to be called to eat--becomes less bumptious, physically and entails more loitering with others, sizing people up, flirting, talking, pushing, shoving and horseplay. Adolescents are always being criticized for this kind of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it. The trouble comes when it is done not within society, but as a form of outlaw life.
The requisite for any of these varieties of incidental play is not pretentious equipment of any sort, but rather space at an immediately convenient and interesting place. The play gets crowded out if sidewalks are too narrow relative to the total demands put on them. It is especially crowded out if the sidewalks also lack minor irregularities in building line. An immense amount of both loitering and play goes on in shallow sidewalk niches out of the line of moving pedestrian feet.”
Source: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
“By now I have come to feel that the fact of being a ‘child’, of being wholly
subservient and dependent, of being seen by older people as a mixture of expensive nuisance, slave and super-pet, does most young people more harm than good”
“Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman.”
Source: The Wild Rose
“Gerald's look assured her that he and the others would be as near angels as children could be without ceasing to be human.”
Source: The Enchanted Castle
“They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up.”
Source: On Beauty
“Always believe in good and happiness. Never except "I can't" Always say I can..”
Source: Happy Valley Pepo And Sully
“I'm not the kind of person who wants to just melt into the background and be one of many.”
Source: Love Among Reptiles
“Independance grows out of a child's faith that her source of security will always be there when she needs it.”
Source: The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning
“The belief that young people are incapable of making reasonable decisions is a cornerstone of our system of compulsory, closely monitored education.”
Source: Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
“The notion of children makes me ill. The thought of having one... when you see those guys in the supermarket, wheeling the trolley around while their brats whine and wheedle and some blundering sow questions every little thing they take off the shelves. I mean, just the fucking idea of it, the very word: family. Whenever I see it, on travel brochures, on house schedules... I feel sick.”
Source: Kill Your Friends