The pain of childhood walks beside me as a friend, it teaches me how to invite the stillness of compassion - Shavasti
At some point people either had to throw off the wounds of their childhood or go through life permanently crippled
the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum...
Mind your business" had been the motto of her childhood. But now that seemed like a failing in a friend.
You can't choose your childhood, it's just what happens to you. But after that you choose. And that's really what (makes you).
In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees
Not much of a childhood, Cass. When did you get to play?” With a frown, she said, “I played.” “You took apart your robot dog.
If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us.
I know how syrupy this sounds, how dull, provincial, and possibly whitewashed, but what can I do? Happy childhoods happen
I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting point from which I have never stopped running.
My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks.
It really was hand-to-mouth and you can say, 'Poor little me, how dreadful, what a deprived childhood', but I didn't feel that way at all. It's all about the attitude at home.
Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.
I mean, there's a sense wherein you skip a part of childhood, too, when you start working at that age I did; I was out working and out of home at 15, paying my own way in the world.
My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.
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.
My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.
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.
For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.
