Quotes and Sayings about Childhood
"I sailed through my childhood with a complete lack of any drama."
- Kate Adie
(Related: Childhood, Drama)
"And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything."
- Josef Albers
(Related: Father, Childhood, Fact)
"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults."
- Brian Aldiss
(Related: Childhood)
"When I moved to Seattle, I was hanging out with kids who had done drugs, had sex a million times. I look at them now and realize their childhood was taken away."
- Jeff Ament
(Related: Sex, Childhood, Drugs, Kids, Now)
"Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
(Related: Childhood, Heaven)
"There are three terrible ages of childhood - 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30."
- Cleveland Amory
(Related: Childhood)
"I didn't have a happy childhood."
- Giorgio Armani
(Related: Childhood)
"One's age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful."
- Thomas Arnold
(Related: Age, Life, Men, Work, Childhood, Evening, Hard work, Labor, May, Sun)
"So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us."
- Gaston Bachelard
(Related: Childhood, Fire)
"Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood."
- Beryl Bainbridge
(Related: Childhood)
"My daddy died when I was two years old. My mother raised my two older brothers and me. And we couldn't have had a better situation. I mean, she was the - ran the concession stand at the Little League, and she was the first woman president of The Touchdown Club, the booster club for the high school football team. And so, I had a wonderful childhood."
- Haley Barbour
(Related: Mother, Brothers, Childhood, First, Football, Old, President, School, Woman, Years)
"Genius is childhood recalled at will."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Genius, Childhood, Will)
"The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence."
- Alison Bechdel
(Related: Childhood, Influence)
"What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence."
- Martha Beck
(Related: Sex, Adolescence, Childhood, Laughter)
"My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity."
- Roberto Benigni
(Related: Mother, Father, Childhood, Humanity)
"I always wanted to be a rock star. That was my childhood dream. That's what I told everybody I was going to be when I grew up."
- Chester Bennington
(Related: Dream, Childhood)
"From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament... the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy."
- Bernard Berenson
(Related: Life, Dream, Childhood)
"The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past."
- Isaiah Berlin
(Related: Values, Childhood, Desire, Heaven, Past)
"Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows."
- John Betjeman
(Related: Childhood, Reason)
"We cannot even recollect the actions of our infancy, our childhood is like something written on a slate and rubbed off."
- Vinoba Bhave
(Related: Actions, Childhood)
"Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Age, Life, Folly, Remorse, Sin, Youth)
"My whole career has been fulfilling my childhood fantasies, playing characters that are larger than life, getting to play a knight, an elf, a prince, and a soldier."
- Orlando Bloom
(Related: Life, Career, Childhood, Knight, Play)
"But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell."
- Louise Bogan
(Related: Childhood, Hell)
"We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect."
- Sissela Bok
(Related: Power, Burden, Childhood, Delight, Experts, Mystery, Secrecy, Sense, Space)
"It's the continuation of everyone's childhood to see these young children who grow up full of life, full of intelligence, full of a sense of wonder. And within an instant they're gone from this world. It's terrible."
- Lucien Bouchard
(Related: Intelligence, Life, Childhood, Children, Sense, Wonder, World)
"Because of my faith and my imagination, I was able to enjoy my childhood, even though it was tough."
- Donna Brazile
(Related: Faith, Imagination, Childhood)
"Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of which he has had visions perhaps from earliest childhood."
- James H. Breasted
(Related: Childhood, Today, Visions)
"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
- Berke Breathed
(Related: Childhood)
"I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education."
- Rory Bremner
(Related: Education, Childhood, Public, School)
"One of the things I want to do that's outside the realm of acting and the arts - although both have their place in this - is ending childhood hunger here in America."
- Jeff Bridges
(Related: Acting, America, Childhood, Ending, Hunger, Want)
"I had no idea that mothering my own child would be so healing to my own sadness from my childhood."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Idea, Childhood, Healing, Sadness)
"My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted."
- Poppy Z. Brite
(Related: Childhood, May)
"Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains."
- Bill Bryson
(Related: Boston, Childhood)
"I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Being, Childhood)
"I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn't have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Dreams, People, Alcohol, Childhood, Drugs, Feeling, Lonely)
"As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Childhood, Extreme)
"My childhood was appalling."
- Taylor Caldwell
(Related: Childhood)
"There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility."
- Maria Callas
(Related: Age, Childhood, Children, Law, Responsibility)
"Any acceleration constitutes progress, Miss Glory. Nature had no understanding of the modern rate of work. From a technical standpoint the whole of childhood is pure nonsense. Simply wasted time. An untenable waste of time."
- Karel Capek
(Related: Nature, Time, Work, Progress, Childhood, Glory, Nonsense, Understanding, Waste)
"My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely."
- Truman Capote
(Related: Life, Childhood, Lonely, Regret)
"I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy."
- Marcel Carne
(Related: Childhood, Forget)
"The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat."
- John le Carre
(Related: Experience, Childhood, May, Old, Parents)
"People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others."
- John Le Carre
(Related: People, Nothing, Pretty)
"Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Balance, Childhood, Writer, Writers)
"I alone, as the sharer of their way of life, presented a replica of childhood."
- Neal Cassady
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"I had a kind of Dickensian childhood."
- Shaun Cassidy
(Related: Childhood)
"I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there."
- Michael Chabon
(Related: Childhood, Memories, Old, Self, Sense)
"My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil."
- Ray Charles
(Related: Music, Childhood)
"Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age."
- Lydia M. Child
(Related: Age, Childhood, Old)
"To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams."
- Giorgio de Chirico
(Related: Art, Dreams, Work, Childhood, Common sense, Logic, Visions, Will)
"One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood."
- Agatha Christie
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety."
- Sandra Cisneros
(Related: Childhood, Memory, Safety)
"Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Books, Childhood, Will)
"In childhood I developed a serious throat infection, and my heart stopped beating. I recovered from that illness with a voice that boomed forth like Kate Smith's!"
- Patsy Cline
(Related: Heart, Childhood, Illness, Voice)
"I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me."
- Kurt Cobain
(Related: Childhood, Divorce)
"I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: People, Childhood)
"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
(Related: Childhood, Poor, Preparation)
"If only my folks had beaten me, I could have gotten some material about my miserable childhood. But as it is, I've had a great life."
- Tim Conway
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"I didn't grow up with my mother, and so losing her for real was like, some sort of latent childhood, some sort of unresolved issue. When she left for real, it was sort of like, I was done."
- Billy Corgan
(Related: Mother, Childhood, Losing)
"My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children."
- Bill Cosby
(Related: Parenting, People, Childhood, Children)
"The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic."
- Bill Cosby
(Related: Childhood, Friends, Play)
"Typically diagnosed during childhood and adolescent years, juvenile diabetes, also referred to as Type I diabetes, currently affects more than 3 million Americans and more then 13,000 children are diagnosed each year."
- Elijah Cummings
(Related: Americans, Childhood, Children, Years)
"My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house."
- Kaley Cuoco
(Related: Business, Family, Childhood, Parents, Talk)
"My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood."
- Paula Danziger
(Related: Mother, Father, Thought, People, Childhood, Sarcastic)
"A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life."
- Robertson Davies
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay."
- Rebecca H. Davis
(Related: Childhood)
"I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Work, Childhood, Sense)
"My early childhood was spent in Newark, New Jersey, but my family moved to Denver when I was 12."
- Anita Diament
(Related: Family, Childhood)
"Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Life, Time, Possibility, Childhood, Mystery, Sense, Wonder)
"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!"
- Charles Dickens
(Related: Childhood, Christmas, Man, Old, Quiet, Youth)
"My childhood was safe and sane. No abuse and no traumas. I was surrounded by a large and loving family who taught me the importance of hard work and a meaningful education."
- Ronnie James Dio
(Related: Education, Family, Work, Abuse, Childhood, Hard work, Importance)
"All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself."
- Rita Dove
(Related: Time, Childhood, First, Moments)
"We have common enemies today. It's called childhood poverty. It's called cancer. It's called AIDS. It's called Parkinson's. It's called Muscular Dystrophy."
- Jerry Doyle
(Related: Cancer, Childhood, Enemies, Poverty, Today)
"I had always wanted to be on SNL, it's not always great, but it's this leftover childhood dream."
- Rachel Dratch
(Related: Dream, Childhood)
"It was a small provincial place with great people and I had a happy childhood growing up in Queens."
- Fran Drescher
(Related: People, Childhood, Growing up)
"I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister."
- Carol Ann Duffy
(Related: Childhood, Space)
"I'm living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks."
- Patty Duke
(Related: Childhood, Fantasy, Living)
"I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met."
- Marguerite Duras
(Related: Mother, People, Madness, Mothers)
"The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well."
- Barbara Ehrenreich
(Related: Life, Successful, Childhood, Worth)
"Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice."
- David Elkind
(Related: Adolescence, Chance, Childhood, Choice)
"The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death."
- Desiderius Erasmus
(Related: Age, Death, Time, Life, People, Childhood, Children, Living, Old)
"When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood."
- Sam Ewing
(Related: Home, Childhood, Old)
"The events of childhood do not pass, but repeat themselves like seasons of the year."
- Eleanor Farjeon
(Related: Childhood, Events, Seasons)
"I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"It was a great experience for a kid, because it was a bunch of kids playing on pirate ships and water slides, so looking back on it, it was the fondest experience of my childhood."
- Corey Feldman
(Related: Experience, Childhood, Kids, Ships, Water)
"A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal."
- Will Ferrell
(Related: People, Childhood, Comedy, Events, Pretty)
"Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating."
- Bob Filner
(Related: Diet, Home, Childhood, Eating, Exercise, Obesity, Restraint)
"Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Men, Childhood, Necessity, Neglect)
"I still love making hamburgers on the grill. I guess whenever I eat them childhood memories come up for me."
- Bobby Flay
(Related: Love, Childhood, Memories)
"I had a wonderful childhood, but I was a wanderer from year one."
- Maureen Forrester
(Related: Childhood)
"When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store."
- Lukas Foss
(Related: War, Childhood, Visit, World, World war)
"The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!"
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: Family, Books, Childhood)
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Father, Childhood, Protection)
"I don't remember the first half of my life. All I say is a happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life."
- Kinky Friedman
(Related: Life, Childhood, First, Preparation)
"A happy childhood... is the worst possible preparation for life."
- Kinky Friedman
(Related: Life, Childhood, Preparation)
"A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost."
- Marion C. Garretty
(Related: Sister, Childhood)
"And we had a DJ - my childhood friend from Chicago came to be the DJ at our party out in LA. It was a party, rockin' and rolling, and it was dancing and fun. For me it was different; just to have family with us."
- Jami Gertz
(Related: Family, Friend, Chicago, Childhood, Dancing, Fun, Party)
"But when alcohol comes in, start running. Because there's a demon there, and it goes back to her childhood."
- David Gest
(Related: Alcohol, Childhood, Running)
"For years I have been mourning and not for my dead, it is for this boy for whatever corner in my heart died when his childhood slid out of my arms."
- William Gibson
(Related: Heart, Childhood, Mourning, Years)
"Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Age, Thought, Childhood, Memory, Song, Songs, Years)
"One thing that is almost always said to me is, I grew up with you. They are meeting me and feel that they actually grew up with me. I was with them during their play hours and thinking hours. I was a part of their childhoods. That's one of the most amazing things."
- Mark Goddard
(Related: Meeting, Play, Thinking)
"Life is the childhood of our immortality."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Life, Childhood, Immortality)
"He carried his childhood like a hurt warm bird held to his middle-aged breast."
- Herbert Gold
(Related: Childhood, Hurt)
"Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of."
- William Golding
(Related: Childhood, Disease, Sickness)
"Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood."
- Andy Goldsworthy
(Related: Childhood, Right, Snow)
"My instinct was that it was Sidney's childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night."
- Lee Grant
(Related: Childhood, Fight, Instinct, Night, Racism)
"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Childhood, Future)
"I spent much of my later childhood and adolescence very, very involved and interested in art, and particularly in animated movies."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Movies, Art, Adolescence, Childhood)
"I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news."
- Alma Guillermoprieto
(Related: Power, History, Childhood, Revolution, News, Now, Years)
"If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood."
- Peter Handke
(Related: Childhood, Nation)
"Chocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: Deliciusness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good."
- Mariska Hargitay
(Related: Being, Childhood, Feeling, First, Luxury, Memories, Reward)
"Childhood is a short season."
- Helen Hayes
(Related: Childhood)
"Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods."
- Michael Herr
(Related: Vietnam)
"Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood."
- Alexander Herzen
(Related: Absurdity, Childhood, Insanity, Italy)
"When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up."
- Herman Hesse
(Related: God, Childhood, Present, Smile, Trying)
"For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself."
- Herman Hesse
(Related: Happiness, Childhood, Hearing, Sound, Word)
"That said, let me add that Joan and I never want him to be a child actor. We both feel that it takes away their childhood and puts untold pressure on children."
- Dwayne Hickman
(Related: Actor, Childhood, Children, Pressure, Want)
"Childhood is a promise that is never kept."
- Ken Hill
(Related: Childhood, Promise)
"For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write."
- Laura Hillenbrand
(Related: Being, Childhood, Choice, Writer)
"Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough."
- James Hillman
(Related: People, Memories, Parents)
"My kitchen looks like the one from my childhood - very homey, with a little bit of Alice in Wonderland!"
- Paris Hilton
(Related: Childhood, Kitchen)
"She is the first head of government in history to give a whole country its second childhood."
- Simon Hoggart
(Related: Government, History, Childhood, Country, First)
"Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of."
- Tom Holt
(Related: Poetry, Childhood, Habits)
"My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more."
- Tom Hooper
(Related: Dad, Wife, Childhood, Kids, Old, World, Years)
"I would like to go back to Wales. I'm obsessed with my childhood and at least three times a week dream I am back there."
- Anthony Hopkins
(Related: Dream, Childhood)
"I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arlington when I was five years old, and it was in Arlington that I spent most of my childhood."
- Alan Hovhaness
(Related: Childhood, Old, Years)
"Somewhere in my wildest childhood I must have done something right. Being able to make a boyhood dream come true is one thing, but to have a kid come along and thrill his dad like Brett Hull has thrilled me over his career is too much for one guy to handle."
- Bobby Hull
(Related: Dad, Dream, Being, Career, Childhood, Right)
"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 pest."
- Steve Irwin
(Related: Dad, People, Childhood, Memories)
"I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people."
- Derek Jacobi
(Related: Business, People, Actors, Childhood, Emotions, Youth)
"For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood."
- Harriet Ann Jacobs
(Related: Childhood, Mind, Principles, Years)
"I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away."
- Harriet Ann Jacobs
(Related: Childhood, Years)
"Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never."
- Anna Jameson
(Related: Childhood, Man, Visit, Youth)
"We were just a gaggle of kids, and everybody played together and had a good time. You know how kids can be completely horrible - abusive but fun. But anyway, it was a nice childhood."
- Peter Jurasik
(Related: Time, Childhood, Fun, Kids)
"My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way."
- Peter Jurasik
(Related: Childhood, Class)
"Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood."
- Louise J. Kaplan
(Related: Adolescence, Adulthood, Childhood)
"It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help."
- John Keegan
(Related: Education, People, Childhood, Help, Regret, World, Writer)
"The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose."
- Garrison Keillor
(Related: Food, Brother, Childhood)
"My childhood wasn't full of wonderful culinary memories."
- Thomas Keller
(Related: Childhood, Memories)
"It was a perfectly average well- adjusted childhood, not a bit unlike that of millions of other individuals."
- DeForest Kelley
(Related: Childhood)
"The most important influence in my childhood was my father."
- DeForest Kelley
(Related: Father, Childhood, Influence)
"The middle years of childhood arrive just as your own are getting uncomfortably close."
- Marguerite Kelly
(Related: Childhood, Years)
"If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you."
- Tracy Kidder
(Related: Childhood)
"The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses."
- Anselm Kiefer
(Related: Childhood, Houses, Project, Reason)
"Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die."
- Soren Kierkegaard
(Related: Heart, Childhood, Sorrow)
"Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood."
- Soren Kierkegaard
(Related: Time, Childhood, Homesickness)
"That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food."
- Satish Kumar
(Related: Food, Childhood, Day, Evening)
"I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
- Charles Lamb
(Related: Childhood, Faces, Old, School)
"Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age."
- Walter Savage Landor
(Related: Age, Adulthood, Childhood, Oil, Old, Study, Youth)
"My childhood home backed onto wheat and cotton fields."
- Robert B. Laughlin
(Related: Home, Childhood)
"I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents."
- Jude Law
(Related: Childhood, Class, London, Middle class)
"People who have fabulous childhoods have this sense that nothing is ever going to be that good again. With me, I have the sense that nothing is going to be that bad."
- Nigella Lawson
(Related: People, Nothing, Sense)
"Childhood smells of perfume and brownies."
- David Leavitt
(Related: Childhood)
"I gave up my childhood for a career."
- Brenda Lee
(Related: Career, Childhood)
"In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams."
- Sergio Leone
(Related: Dreams, Life, Religion, America, Americans, Childhood)
"I never had any childhood, for the word means sunshine and freedom from care. I had a starved and pinched little childhood, as far as love and merriment go."
- Frank Leslie
(Related: Love, Care, Childhood, Freedom, Merriment, Word)
"I'm a Brooklyn boy. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there, and spent most of my childhood there."
- Robert Jay Lifton
(Related: Childhood)
"It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like."
- Maya Lin
(Related: Childhood, Hindsight)
"The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence."
- Art Linkletter
(Related: Adolescence, Childhood, Man)
"I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood."
- Franz Liszt
(Related: Faith, Work, Heart, Church, Childhood)
"When I look back, it was a strange period in my life, looking at my childhood and then my teenage years and forming Slayer when I was still 17, not out of high school."
- Dave Lombardo
(Related: Life, Childhood, School, Teenage, Years)
"My nomadic childhood dramatically fed my eventual decision to be an actor, but not in the way you might think."
- Josh Lucas
(Related: Decision, Actor, Childhood)
"The only difference between the Bel Air of the '90s and the Bel Air of my childhood is that now the nannies are Latina instead of British, and the cars European instead of American."
- Lorna Luft
(Related: American, Childhood, Difference, Now)
"Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood."
- William H. Macy
(Related: Actor, Childhood)
"We sat down and told stories that happened to us in our childhood, to our children. They were all basically based on the truth. These stories were funny and poignant to us. They just took off. These are all stories from my life."
- Howie Mandel
(Related: Funny, Life, Truth, Childhood, Children)
"I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world."
- Sophie Marceau
(Related: Love, Childhood, World)
"Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death."
- Rollo May
(Related: Death, Creativity, Being, Childhood, Passion, Spontaneity, Youth)
"I've never outgrown my childhood."
- David McCallum
(Related: Childhood)
"My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn."
- Frank McCourt
(Related: Time, Childhood)
"It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age."
- Margaret Mead
(Related: Age, Work, Childhood, Learning, Middle age, Old, Play)
"I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well."
- Angela Merkel
(Related: Bicycles, Childhood)
"Let a man turn to his own childhood - no further - if he will renew his sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change."
- Alice Meynell
(Related: Change, Childhood, Man, Mystery, Sense, Will)
"I had a marvelously happy childhood."
- Darius Milhaud
(Related: Childhood)
"Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Related: Childhood)
"Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation."
- Alice Miller
(Related: Childhood, Disease)
"It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person."
- Alice Miller
(Related: People, Childhood, Fact, Obvious)
"It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion - something that has always been disputed by the most respected schools of thought."
- Alice Miller
(Related: Thought, Childhood, Confusion, Repression, Schools)
"The rate of childhood obesity is just ridiculous. Anytime I can get involved with teaching them how to get physical exercise, I want to help in any way possible."
- Shannon Miller
(Related: Childhood, Exercise, Help, Obesity, Teaching, Want)
"I didn't have a childhood."
- Pat Morita
(Related: Childhood)
"Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!"
- Max Muller
(Related: Childhood, Secrets)
"We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon."
- Kary Mullis
(Related: Childhood, Enemies)
"In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head."
- Edvard Munch
(Related: Mother, Childhood, Hell, Punishment)
"Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres."
- Hector Hugh Munro
(Related: Childhood, Interest, Wishes)
"As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease."
- Larry Niven
(Related: Childhood, Disease, Population)
"I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness."
- Edna O'Brien
(Related: Time, Awareness, Childhood, Trying)
"Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever, ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home, from my childhood, are still with me."
- Hakeem Olajuwon
(Related: Home, Being, Childhood, Principles)
"The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll."
- Jerry Only
(Related: Dream, Childhood, Punk, Songs)
"Doctor Who was a big part of my childhood so it was a great honour to be in it."
- Simon Pegg
(Related: Childhood)
"You draw on your own childhood every time you tee it up as an actor."
- Ron Perlman
(Related: Time, Actor, Childhood)
"What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero."
- Pablo Picasso
(Related: Genius, Childhood, Day, May, Will)
"A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality."
- Pindar
(Related: Age, Childhood, Immortality, Old)
"I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that would have pleased him."
- Daniel Pinkwater
(Related: Childhood, Taste, World)
"To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days."
- Plutarch
(Related: Men, Childhood, State)
"Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies."
- Sydney Pollack
(Related: Movies, Childhood, Weekend)
"My relationship with "Pollyanna" is a very personal one, because Pollyanna got me through my childhood."
- Eleanor Porter
(Related: Childhood)
"Some of the words and symbols and images from childhood will continually be part and parcel of my personality."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Childhood, Personality, Will, Words)
"The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Childhood, Loss, Magic, Wonder)
"I think childhood is to everyone a lost land."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Childhood, Land)
"Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Imagination, Opportunity, Ideas, Childhood, Language, Play, Problems, Writing)
"I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood."
- Jack Prelutsky
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange."
- Charley Pride
(Related: Thought, People, Childhood)
"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Childhood, Favorite)
"I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Childhood, Writing)
"How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood."
- Harold Ramis
(Related: Success, Failure, Childhood)
"In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood."
- John Ratzenberger
(Related: Age, Son, Childhood, Fact, First, Word)
"I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Money, Childhood, Night, Parents)
"What is it like to fall asleep? What happens? Where do we go? Why don't we remember? Since childhood most of us have wondered about the mystery of sleep."
- Henry Reed
(Related: Childhood, Mystery, Sleep)
"Every single person in jail for a violent crime had a nightmare childhood."
- Rob Reiner
(Related: Childhood, Crime)
"My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including 4th of July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand."
- Frederick Reines
(Related: Life, Music, American, Childhood, Country, July, Memories)
"I wanted to have a normal childhood. Normal relationships."
- Tommy Rettig
(Related: Childhood, Relationships)
"You give up your childhood. You miss proms and games and high-school events, and people say it's awful... I say it was a good trade. You miss something but I think I gained more than I lost."
- Mary Lou Retton
(Related: People, Childhood, Events, Games, Trade)
"It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all."
- Miranda Richardson
(Related: Beach, Childhood)
"As I grew up in that world and saw how much it affected her world and how much it affected our childhood, it made me very aware of politics. Of course, I have my own private feelings and thoughts, but I don't care to share them."
- Natasha Richardson
(Related: Politics, Feelings, Thoughts, Care, Childhood, World)
"All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views."
- Samuel Richardson
(Related: Childhood, Trifles, Years)
"Since an early age I was taught to be very politically aware and knew from childhood that the process was something I wanted to contribute towards if I could."
- Adam Rickitt
(Related: Age, Childhood)
"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will."
- Arthur Rimbaud
(Related: Genius, Childhood, Will)
"I spent my whole childhood looking for an escape."
- Dennis Rodman
(Related: Childhood)
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."
- Fred Rogers
(Related: Work, Childhood, Children, Learning, Play)
"We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them."
- Jon Ronson
(Related: Nothing, Understanding)
"Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist."
- Ned Rorem
(Related: Artist, Being, Childhood, Perceptions)
"Childhood is the sleep of reason."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Childhood, Reason, Sleep)
"I had the pleasure, as Robin said, to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity."
- Nolan Ryan
(Related: Dream, Opportunity, Americans, Baseball, Childhood, Children, Play, Pleasure, Youth)
"I attended Sunday School and then church with my father and mother throughout my childhood."
- Leverett Saltonstall
(Related: Mother, Father, Church, Childhood, School)
"That aesthetic of the Star Wars universe: the do-it-yourself, hotrod ethic that George Lucas exported from his childhood, is exactly the same kind of soul behind what we do and build for the show. It may not look pretty, but it gets the job done."
- Adam Savage
(Related: Soul, Childhood, Job, May, Pretty)
"Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden."
- Gerald Scarfe
(Related: Bed, Childhood)
"I remember seeing war hero Jimmy Doolittle fly a Gee Bee racer there. He was my childhood hero. Many years later, I was lucky enough to go hunting with him."
- Wally Schirra
(Related: War, Childhood, Hunting, Years)
"For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood."
- Alfred Schnittke
(Related: Childhood, Years)
"I've been following what's happening in Colombia because it's the country of my childhood."
- Barbet Schroeder
(Related: Childhood, Country)
"My actual childhood, as opposed to my adolescence, was not spent in London."
- Peter Shaffer
(Related: Adolescence, Childhood, London)
"One of the reasons I get so much joy out of my own children's childhoods is that I'm having my first childhood myself."
- Al Sharpton
(Related: Childhood, Children, First, Joy)
"My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood."
- Harry Shearer
(Related: Time, Thought, Actor, Being, Childhood, Parents, Want)
"What is a normal childhood? We weren't rich, we were pretty middle-class. My dad survived from job to job; with him taking care of so many relatives, he couldn't save any money."
- Charlie Sheen
(Related: Dad, Money, Care, Childhood, Job, Pretty, Relatives)
"I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife."
- Patti Smith
(Related: Mother, Financial, Childhood)
"From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else."
- John Philip Sousa
(Related: Music, Childhood, Desire)
"I look back to a happy childhood."
- Catherine Helen Spence
(Related: Childhood)
"All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood."
- Benjamin Spock
(Related: Time, Childhood, Learning)
"Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood."
- Gertrude Stein
(Related: People, Childhood)
"I am among the few who continue to draw after childhood is ended, continuing and perfecting childhood drawing - without the traditional interruption of academic training."
- Saul Steinberg
(Related: Childhood, Training)
"There was a special challenge in describing the awful childhood of a person who happens to be my own husband. It was very painful at times, for both of us."
- Pamela Stephenson
(Related: HusbChallenge, Childhood)
"I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid."
- Patrick Stewart
(Related: Being, Childhood, Poor)
"If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older."
- Tom Stoppard
(Related: Childhood)
"These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off."
- Peter Straub
(Related: Time, Books, Childhood, Experts, Forget)
"Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along."
- Harry Stack Sullivan
(Related: Life, Childhood)
"I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation."
- William Graham Sumner
(Related: Childhood, Economy, Man, Practice, Sons)
"Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum."
- Thomas Szasz
(Related: Age, Adulthood, Childhood, Old)
"My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didn't always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Mother, Childhood)
"The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out."
- Donna Tartt
(Related: Books, Childhood, First, Now)
"Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky."
- Valentina Tereshkova
(Related: Love, Time, Dream, Childhood, Rest, Sky, Space, Will)
"I was an escapee of childhood. I always wanted to grow up."
- Uma Thurman
(Related: Childhood)
"When we are thirsty, we drink the white waters of the pool, the sweetness of our mournful childhood."
- Georg Trakl
(Related: Childhood, Sweetness)
"Sure, my childhood was unusual. All these eccentric, wild people frequented our home: rock stars, drag queens, models, bikers, freaks. But I was not this little rich girl. My mom and I lived in an apartment."
- Liv Tyler
(Related: Mom, People, Childhood, Stars)
"My childhood beliefs became so much a part of me that even today I find myself automatically living by a personal standard of conduct which can only be explained as resulting from my religious training."
- Robert Vaughn
(Related: Beliefs, Childhood, Living, Religious, Today, Training)
"People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway."
- Tim Vine
(Related: Funny, People, Childhood, Effort, Silly, Swearing)
"Coming from a barely clothed childhood as a swimmer makes me really comfortable with my body."
- Estella Warren
(Related: Body, Childhood)
"Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me."
- Ethel Waters
(Related: Mom, Childhood, Drinking, Influence, Lust, Vice)
"We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise."
- Raquel Welch
(Related: Marriage, Love, Dream, Childhood, Compromise, Reality)
"At heart, this job is about continuing to make great theatre for the people of Sheffield - a city I've known and loved since childhood."
- Samuel West
(Related: People, Heart, Childhood, Job, Theatre)
"There's something about childhood friends that you just can't replace."
- Lisa Whelchel
(Related: Childhood, Friends)
"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."
- E. B. White
(Related: People, Childhood, Mind, Open, World)
"I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Childhood, Gifts)
"I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream."
- Andrew Wiles
(Related: Life, Dream, Being, Childhood, Privilege)
"I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days."
- Andrew Wiles
(Related: Love, Childhood, England, Mathematics)
"Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it."
- George Will
(Related: Business, Childhood)
"Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld."
- Henry Williamson
(Related: Father, Thought, Birds, Childhood, Eyes, Flowers, Friends, Old, Rivers, Spirit, Trees)
"I'm aware of what kids like because I'm constantly in touch with them. Also, they say that a lot of people who write for children can remember their own childhoods vividly and I can remember my childhood very vividly."
- Eric Wilson
(Related: People, Childhood, Children, Kids)
"Right now I belong to the wonderful organization called The Children's Action Network. The first thing we did was immunize 200,000 children across the country against childhood diseases."
- Henry Winkler
(Related: Action, Childhood, Children, Country, First, Network, Now, Right)
"I like consistency. If you've had a childhood like mine, you want some things you can rely on to stay the same."
- Norman Wisdom
(Related: Consistency, Childhood, Want)
"That great Cathedral space which was childhood."
- Virginia Woolf
(Related: Childhood, Space)
"Everyone has a childhood, everyone had awkward years and weird stages. Mine were broadcast for eight years."
- Tina Yothers
(Related: Childhood, Years)
"I have no complaints with the whole childhood acting thing, because I wanted to do it."
- Tina Yothers
(Related: Acting, Childhood, Complaints)
"My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college."
- Philip Zimbardo
(Related: Family, Childhood, College, First, Poor, School)