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Childhood Quotes

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Childhood Quotes

“It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantGivingYearsHoursSleepLaughingChildhoodCryArmsHarderJust OneMore TimeGood Thoughts
Author:Robert Fulghum
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“We hug, but there are no tears. For every awful thing that's been said and done, she is my sister. Parents die, daughters grow up and marry out, but sisters are for life. She is the only person left in the world who shares my memories of our childhood, our parents, our Shanghai, our struggles, our sorrows, and, yes, even our moments of happiness and triumph. My sister is the one person who truly knows me, as I know her. The last thing May says to me is 'When our hair is white, we'll still have our sister love.”

KnowsWorldMayPersonsSaidStillsDoneMomentsLastsDiesLeftGrowsParentMemoriesWhiteStruggleGrowing UpShareChildhoodTearsHairSorrowDaughterAwfulTriumphMy SisterHugKnow MeSisterSaid And DoneShanghaiSister LoveMoments Of Happiness
Book:Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy: Two Bestselling Novels
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“I tell the kids that, even in a childhood marked by despair and deprivation, I knew that no matter what happened, I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.”

KnowsStillsMatterKidsTogetherHappenedChildhoodDespairMy FamilyNo Matter WhatFoundationSeriesIllVariousDivorceOddArrangementsRippedBack TogetherDeprivationRemnantsSolid FoundationRemarriage
Author:Bill Bryson
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“We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.”

KnowsMenWorldChildrenAgeBornKnowingChildhoodYouthPlanetsMarriedInnocentOld AgeOne TimeNew LifeBeing MarriedHeadingsInexperienceInnocent Children
Author:Milan Kundera
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“This was the kiss I had waited for so long - a kiss born by the river of our childhood, when we didn't yet know what love meant. A kiss that had been suspended in the air as we grew, that had traveled in the world in the sovenier of a medal, and that had remained hidden behind piles of books. A kiss that had been lost and now was found. In the moment of that kiss were years of searching, disillusionment and impossible dreams.”

KnowsWorldYearsLongBookMomentsDreamFoundLostBornBehindsImpossibleAirChildhoodGrewKissingRiversTraveledMedalDisillusionmentSuspendedImpossible Dream
Author:Paulo Coelho
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“I’m telling you right now I could make him pop an aneurysm and no one would know. (Nero) Doesn’t that kind of murder bother you at all? (Alix) Given everything people have done to me in my life, little girl, especially in my childhood when I was helpless against them, humanity is lucky I’m not on a perpetual killing spree. As for the Merjacks…I owe them a debt that no amount of violence on my part will settle. So, no. Nothing about killing him would bother me. (Nero)”

PeopleKnowsKindLittlesDoneHumanityGirlGivenViolenceChildhoodAmountRight NowLuckyMurderKillingPopsDebtBotherSettlingPerpetualHelplessNero
Author:Sherrilyn Kenyon
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“She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.”

KnowsYearsLittlesDoneWould BeValuesCitiesWonderMorningTakenStreetsChildhoodWindColdSummerWarmFoolishTouchedMore TimeSummer DaysTime Goes ByYear OneCity Streets
Book:The Haunting of Hill House
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“Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she’s a woman. We know she’s a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the constant state of risk and danger they are living in.”

ThinkingKnowsWantYearsStatesEnoughGirlFateRiskChildhoodDangerRight NowConstantDenialSexismMexicanGirlhoodColored Girls
Author:Bell Hooks
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“Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives.”

KnowsMindMayActionCertainChildhoodJudgingIntegrityMovedExcellenceAffectionSuperiorsConclusionMotiveCompanionDispositionOur Actions
Book:Annotated Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus with English Grammar Exercises: by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
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“I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.”

IfsKnowsWritingWellsSaidDoneEnoughMemoriesWorryChildhoodStudentsMaterialsOkayHorribleNosesSurvivedGrimWell DonePlugs
Author:Anne Lamott
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“I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.”

IfsKnowsWantGivingTryingHeartChildrenLongMightHappensJoyWaitingMemoriesBehindsWonderfulDoorsChildhoodGive MeChristmasVulnerableMake SenseFar AwayLong Ago
Author:Robert Fulghum
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“Rain Soft rain, summer rain Whispers from bushes, whispers from trees. Oh, how lovely and full of blessing To dream and be satisfied. I was so long in the outer brightness, I am not used to this upheaval: Being at home in my own soul, Never to be led elsewhere. I want nothing, I long for nothing, I hum gently the sounds of childhood, And I reach home astounded In the warm beauty of dreams. Heart, how torn you are, How blessed to plow down blindly, To think nothing, to know nothing, Only to breathe, only to feel.”

ThinkingKnowsWantFeelsHeartLongSoulHomeDreamUsedSoundMy OwnTreeChildhoodBlessingSummerRainBlessedWarmBreatheLovelySatisfiedElsewhereTornBrightnessUpheavalAstoundedSummer Rain
Author:Hermann Hesse
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“This is your heritage,' he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about how his own Paps, how he had beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still steeping and snapping perfectly in time.”

IfsKnowsMenSaidStillsCitiesChildhoodMovementBuildingTaughtDrinkProjectsBeatsRedDancingBeerParksHallsHeritageHookFlavorGritHarlemPuerto RicoGrabbingFridgesRicoSnappingTenementsCity ParksSpanish Harlem
Author:Justin Torres
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“Nicholas Benedict did have an exceptional gift for knowing things (more exceptional, in fact, than most adults would have thought possible), and yet not even he could know that this next chapter was to be the most unusual-and most important-of his entire childhood. Indeed, the strange days that lay ahead would change him forever, though for now they had less substance than the mist through which he ran.”

KnowsImportantFactsNextForeverKnowingChildhoodStrangeAdultsLaysSubstanceRanUnusualChaptersExceptionalMistNext ChapterKnowing ThingsStrange Days
Author:Trenton Lee Stewart
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“At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but -- I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture -- that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron. [From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.]”

PeopleKnowsWritingDifferentEndsCharacterDesireCultureStrongAnswersChildhoodMomMetsFemaleResponseExtraordinaryFeministMy MomComicThe End Of The DayDifferent ThingsFemale CharactersCameronStrong Female CharactersStrong FemaleSan DiegoComic Con
Author:Joss Whedon
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“There are vivid memories from my childhood-what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose if I wanted to be fair I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers. But the truth is that I went through a lot of hell, and a lot of people did. If we can even the score a little for the workers then we are doing something. Besides, I don't know any other work I like to do better than this. I really don't.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantTryingLittlesWantedSocialMemoriesJusticeHellChildhoodConditionsTruth IsLowsCommitmentFairsSocial JusticeUnionsWorkersSettlingScoreFarmsWagesVividVivid Memories
Book:An Organizer's Tale: Speeches
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“(Talking about his first computer) Like all kids we not only fooled around with our toys, we changed them. If you've ever watched a child with a cardboard carton and a box of crayons create a spaceship with cool control panels, or listened to their improvised rules, such as "Red cars can jump all others," then you know that this impulse to make a toy do more is at the heart of innovative childhood play. It is also the essence of creativity.”

IfsKnowsFirstsHeartChildrenPlayKidsFunTalkingCreativityChildhoodCarChangedComputerRedEssenceBoxesImpulseToysInnovativeFooledSpaceshipsCrayon
Author:Bill Gates
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“As soon as one knows one is going to die, childhood is over.... So one can be grown up at seven. Then, I believe most human beings forget what they have understood, recover another sort of childhood that can last all their lives. It is not a true childhood but a kind of forgetting. Desires and anxieties are there, preventing you from having access to the essential truth.”

KnowsBelieveHumansKindLastsDesireDiesI BelieveHuman BeingsForgetChildhoodEssentialsAnxietyUnderstoodPhilosophicalSevenAccessPreventing
Author:Eugene Ionesco
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“We are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But know that it's still there.”

KnowsWantGivingYearsStillsIdeasSoulGrowsGrowing UpImpossibleChildhoodCallingGiving UpPrejudiceGuiltInvisibleBuriedLayersNever Giving UpThere Comes A Time
Book:The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition
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“My dad taught me from my youngest childhood memories through these connections with Aboriginal and tribal people that you must always protect people's sacred status, regardless of the past. Every time you lose an animal, it's like losing a brick from the house. Pretty soon the house just falls down, you know?”

PeopleKnowsPastFallHouseLosesMemoriesAnimalEnvironmentChildhoodTaughtDadProtectLosingConnectionsSacredMy DadBricksFalling DownChildhood MemoriesAboriginal
Author:Bindi Irwin
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“Everyone’s childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand. By this I don’t know if I’m just giving up with this conclusion or resigning myself — or maybe for the first time connecting with reality. How do we know the pain or another’s earlier years, let alone all that he drags with him since along the way at best a lot of leeway is needed for the other — yet how much is unhealthy for one to bear. I think to love bravely is the best and accept — as much as one can bear.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWayGivingYearsFirstsPlayRealityPainAcceptingWonderChildhoodBearsNeededGiving UpFirst TimeConclusionDragConnectingUnhealthyResigning
Author:Marilyn Monroe
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