Child Narrator Quotes

But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

If we were created in God's image, then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions. ~ Buddy Wakefield

There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child. ~ Frank A. Clark

Mark whirled on them. His eyes were blind, unseeing. You bring the twins in front of me and you kill them over and over. My Ty, he doesn't understand why I can't save him. You bring me Dru and when she laughs to see the fairytale castle, all ringed round with hedges, you throw her against the thorns until their pierce her small body. And you bid me wash in Octavian's blood for the blood of an innocent child is magic under the Hill. ~ Cassandra Clare

Parents with a child born at the end of the calendar year often think about holding their child back before the start of kindergarten: it's hard for a five-year-old to keep up with a child born many months earlier. But most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn't. It's just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return? ~ Epictetus

The prospect of being a father made me ask myself a question. How do you know what kind of adult your child will turn out to be? And how much can you control that? ~ Noah Hawley

I'm a firm believer the the first two tenets of effective child-rearing boil down to "spend a lot of time with your children" and "cherish them," because, one, they need you when they're growing, and, two, they're going to be up and gone before you realize it. ~ Archie Manning

I'm not a child," Eliza argued with the closed double doors. "I'm a grown woman. With accomplishments and bosoms and everything. ~ Tessa Dare

Why should caring for others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day resolve. Let me offer my own "hand waving" explanation by saying that advanced empathy requires both mental mirroring and mental separation. The mirroring allows the sight of another person in a particular emotional state to induce a similar state in us. We literally feel their pain, loss, delight, disgust, etc., through so-called shared representations. Neuroimaging shows that our brains are similarly activated as those of people we identify with. This is an ancient mechanism: It is automatic, starts early in life, and probably characterizes all mammals. But we go beyond this, and this is where mental separation comes in. We parse our own state from the other's. Otherwise, we would be like the toddler who cries when she hears another cry but fails to distinguish her own distress from the other's. How could she care for the other if she can't even tell where her feelings are coming from? In the words of psychologist Daniel Goleman, "Self-absorption kills empathy." The child needs to disentangle herself from the other so as to pinpoint the actual source of her feelings. ~ Frans De Waal

We call this a state of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? Where, in the sharp lineaments of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which are to come? Lay death and sleep down, side by side, and say who shall find the two akin. Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image. ~ Charles Dickens

I did not want to become a poster child for yet another disease. ~ Andy Grove

She made a creche outside the Inn. The natives thought it was wonderful, and Sister Honey was gratified by their numbers.
Why have the devils with wings come to mock at the poor baby?' asked the children, pointing to the angels.
The baby is the Number One Lord Jesus Christ,' Ayah told them.
But he hasn't any clothes on! Aren't they going to give Him anything? Not a little red robe? Not a bit of melted butter?'
This is His Mother,' said Ayah, showing them the little porcelain Virgin in blue and white and pink. 'He is her child.'
That isn't true,' said the women, measuring the baby with their eyes. 'He's too big to be possible. Probably He's a dragon, an evil spirit in the shape of a child, and presently He'll eat up the woman. ~ Rumer Godden

Survivors of abuse are naturally aware that the past possesses the solutions for shaping up and going forward. ~ Patricia Dsouza

The writer was able to capture many of the feelings that I actually had as a abandoned and then adopted child. Actually I have just finished my own story along with my sister that we found each other after 56 years and what a journey. ~ David M. Brodzinsky

The educator wants the child to be finished at once and perfect. He forces upon the child an unnatural degree of self-mastery, a devotion to duty, a sense of honour - habits that adults get out of with astonishing rapidity. ~ Ellen Key

It is not that you give birth to a child that matters most. Rather, it is what you birth into them. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

First of all, everyone must acknowledge and feel that child slavery still exists in the world, in its ugliest face and form. And this is an evil, which is crime against humanity, which is intolerable, which is unacceptable and which must go. That sense of recognition must be developed first of all. And secondly there is a need of higher amounts of political will. There is a need of higher amount of corporate engagement, and the engagement of the public towards it. So, everybody has a responsibility to save and protect the children on this planet. ~ Kailash Satyarthi

That they were torn from mistakes they had no chance to fix; everything unfinished. All the sins of love without detail, detail without love. The regret of having spoken, of having run out of time to speak. Of hoarding oneself. Of turning one's back too often in favour of sleep. I tried to imagine their physical needs, the indignity of human needs grown so extreme they equal your longing for wife, child, sister, parent, friend. But truthfully I couldn't even begin to imagine the trauma of their hearts, of being taken in the middle of their lives. Those with young children. Or those newly in love, wrenched from that state of grace. Or those who had lived invisibly, who were never know. ~ Anne Michaels

Child psychology and animal psychology are of relatively slight importance, as compared with the sciences which deal with the corresponding physiological problems of ontogeny and phylogeny. ~ Wilhelm Wundt

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. ~ Jane Kenyon

Children are infinitely credulous. My Lisa was a dull child, but even so she came up with things that pleased and startled me. 'Are there dragons?' she asked. I said that there were not. 'Have there ever been?' I said all the evidence was to the contrary. 'But if there is a word dragon,' she said, 'then once there must have been dragons. ~ Penelope Lively

I've gone to work, I've raised a child, and I've spent 30 years trying to better the lives of children and families. But I often return to one thing I said way back then - that politics is the art of making possible what appears to be impossible. ~ Hillary Clinton

Education has for its object to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature-this is alike the aim of parent and teacher. ~ Herbert Spencer

Magic won't save us. The power it would take to conjure on such a scale, the tithe would destroy us. The only hope ... is hope. You don't need tokens for it- it's in your heart or nowhere. And in your heart, child, it had been stronger than I have ever seen. ~ Laini Taylor

Think through the well-meaning motivations of both your Dictator and your Wild Child, until you really understand that within their limited perspectives they're doing their very best. Then offer them both kindness. ~ Martha N. Beck

Justin frowned. "Do I have to stay in the nursery? With the the babies?"
"Darling, you're four years old - "
"Almost five!"
Phoebe's lips quirked. There was a wealth of interest and empathy in the gaze she bent on her small son. "You may stay in my room, if you like," she offered.
The child was appalled by the suggestion.
"I can't sleep in your room," he said indignantly.
"Why not?"
"People might think we were married!"
West concentrated on a distant spot on the floor, struggling hold back a laugh. When he was able, he took a steadying breath and risked a glance at Lady Clare. To his secret delight, she appeared to be considering the point as if it were entirely valid. ~ Lisa Kleypas

We don't like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she [Julia Child] was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women who were typing mostly but also had something to do. ~ Meryl Streep

She loves him the way a mother should love their child. Thoroughly. Completely. To her, he's the most important person in the world and I'm so very happy they have that. ~ Nyrae Dawn

I've been insulted by fools before. I survived." Even in the dim light he saw her eyes change.

"Just because he was using words instead of a knife, you can't dismiss it, Saetan. He hurt you."

"Of course he hurt me," Saetan snapped. "Being accused of - " He closed his eyes and squeezed her hand. "I don't tolerate fools, Jaenelle, but I also don't kill them for being fools. I simply keep them out of my life." He sat up and took her other hand. "I am your sword and your shield, Lady. You don't have to kill."

Witch studied him with her ancient, haunted sapphire eyes. "You'll take the scars on your soul so that mine remains unmarked?"

"Everything has a price," he said gently. "Those kinds of scars are part of being a Warlord Prince. You're at a crossroads, witch-child. You can use your power to heal or to harm. It's your choice. ~ Anne Bishop

Adults need to come to understand that the child does not want any of our power. He merely wants some of his own. ~ Richard Lavoie

I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying, "She hoped I should be a good child," dismissed me along with Miss Miller. ~ Charlotte Bronte

A child of the light confesses instantly and stands bared before God; a child of the darkness says, 'Oh, I can explain that away. ~ Oswald Chambers

I really like being pregnant. Not that there aren't things I don't love, but when I think about what my body is doing - creating a child - it just blows my mind. I'm in awe of the process and science. ~ Emily Deschanel

Back when I was dating, the dreaded C word was Commitment. As soon as most men found out I had a child, they ran. If I ever got close enough to say the words, 'I love you,' they ran faster. ~ Regina Brett

For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.' ~ Brian Cox

When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree. ~ Vin Diesel