Quotes about Childhood

Turning off or tuning out people was my highly developed art. The custom of letting obedient children be seen but not heard was so agreeable to me that I went one step further: Obedient children should not see or hear if they chose not to do so. I laid a handful of attention on my face and tuned up the sounds in the church.

The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.

The God of my childhood was an old, white, Vandyck-bearded Father Time, who roared up thunder, then puffed out His cheeks and blew down hurricanes on His errant children. He could be placated only if one fell prostrate, groveled and begged for mercy. I didn't like that God, but He did seem more real than a Maker who was just thought and spirit. I wished for a Someone in between.

As parents know, little children are, by their nature, without guile. They speak the thoughts of their minds without reservation or hesitance as we have learned as parents when they embarrass us at times. They do not deceive. They set an example of being without guile.

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up.

Growing up in Canada, none of my family were performers or anything like that, but I was terrible at hockey, so they needed something for me to do on Saturdays for me to get out of the house. I signed up for theater school on Saturdays, and I'd go for four-and-a-half hours every Saturday morning and learn about theater.

Before the seventeenth century, a child passed directly into the adult world between the ages of five and seven . . . then came the industrial revolution . . .so the child-centered home was born.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

Super Bowl V was the Colts against the Cowboys and Jim O'Brien kicked a 32 yard field goal to beat the Cowboys. I was traumatized by it. Everyone at school knew I was the only Cowboy fan in the area. I didn't want to go to school and I begged and pleaded with my parents. Those are indelible memories when you are a kid.

I still have deep respect for the evangelical tradition and feel, in many ways, close to the Baptist roots of my childhood, although I've been an Episcopalian throughout my adult life and a regular churchgoer.

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

As a child, I came across the Bible, but nobody in my family had anything to do with religion. I just felt a profound truth there that appealed to me.