Childhood Home Quotes

Home is a damaged word, bruisable as fruit, in the cruel glossaries of the language I choose to describe the long, fearful march of my childhood. Home was a word that caught in my throat, stung like a paper cut, drew blood in its passover of my life, and hurt me in all the soft places. My longing for home was as powerful as fire in my bloodstream. ~ Pat Conroy

Sometimes, as a great treat, I was allowed to remove Nursie's snowy ruffled cap. Without it, she somehow retreated into private life and lost her official status. Then, with elaborate care, I would tie a large blue satin ribbon round her head - with enormous difficulty and holding my breath, because tying a bow is no easy matter for a four-year-old. After which I would step back and exclaim in ecstasy: "Oh Nursie, you ARE beautiful!"
At which she would smile and say in her gentle voice:
"Am I, love? ~ Agatha Christie

So…you're not going to tell me what they mean? C'mon. What's the Hob? Why Forks?"

When I stand, I switch to my blatantly rude, you're-an-idiot tone. This is the one that always pisses off my mom. To be sure he's not missing my insult this time, I also cross my arms and speak very slowly like I'm speaking to a toddler. "The Hob is from The Hunger Games books. It's the underground market where the characters trade food and information. Forks would be the town in Twilight. The setting. In boy-speak, Forks equals the planet Tatooine for Star Wars. You know - Anakin Skywalker's childhood home? Or are you not familiar with any global blockbusters? I suppose I could use Sesame Street or Pokémon for a reference - if it would help you understand better?"

Bam. That should seal it. I couldn't have sounded more like a total bitch.

He nods. "No, I've got it. My bedroom was Tatooine for all of third and fourth grade. Boy-speak…that's funny." He laughs again, and it sounds warm and - and - not at all offended! ~ Anne Eliot

O enchanted land of my childhood, a cultural petri dish from which regularly issues forth greatness. New Jersey, in case you didn't know it, has got beaches. And they're not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows. I grew up summering on those beaches and they are awesome. Jersey's got farmland, beautiful bedroom communities where that woman from "Real Housewives" who looks like Dr. Zaius does not live nor anyone like her. Even the refineries, the endless cloverleaves of turnpikes and expressway twisting and unknowable patterns over the wetlands that are to me somehow beautiful. To know Jersey is to love her. ~ Anthony Bourdain

you were last seen walking through a field of pianos. no. a museum of mouths. in the kitchen of a bustling restaurant, cracking eggs and releasing doves. no. eating glow worms and waltzing past my bedroom. last seen riding the subway, literally, straddling its metal back, clutching electrical cables as reins. you were wearing a dress made out of envelopes and stamps, this was how you travelled. i was the mannequin in the storefront window you could have sworn moved. the library card in the book you were reading until that dog trotted up and licked your face. the cookie with two fortunes. the one jamming herself through the paper shredder, afraid to talk to you. the beggar, hat outstretched bumming for more minutes. the phone number on the bathroom stall with no agenda other than a good time. the good time is a picnic on water, or a movie theatre that only plays your childhood home videos and no one hushes when you talk through them. when they play my videos i throw milk duds at the screen during the scenes i watch myself letting you go – lost to the other side of an elevator – your face switching to someone else's with the swish of a geisha's fan. my father could have been a travelling salesman. i could have been born on any doorstep. there are 2,469,501 cities in this world, and a lot of doorsteps. meet me on the boardwalk. i'll be sure to wear my eyes. do not forget your face. i could never. ~ Megan Falley

There are many women in their late teens and early twenties who have either experienced violence in a relationship or have witnessed it at home in their childhood. ~ Miquita Oliver

If we don't demonstrate solidarity through small collective sacrifices, we will not win the war, and if we do not win the war, we will lose the childhood home of every human who has ever lived. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

This was the part of the road he knew best, the part his old blue Schwinn had known so well that at one time, the bike might have found its way back home without anyone riding it. ~ Sere Prince Halverson

My folks still live in my childhood home, and so when I'm home with them, I usually feel the best. ~ Topher Grace

There are those of us who learn to live completely in the moment. For such people the Past vanishes and the future loses meaning. There is only the Present, which means that two of the three Aalim are surplus to requirements. And then there are those of us who are trapped in yesterdays, in the memory of a lost love, or a childhood home, or a dreadful crime. And some people live only for a better tomorrow; for them the past ceases to exist ~ Salman Rushdie

On the occasion of a visit to Jane Austen's childhood home in Steventon, Hampshire:

"I put my hand down on Jane's desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day. ~ Barbara Pym

I escaped the torture of my childhood home by reading. To this day it is still one of my greatest pleasures. ~ Colleen McCullough

Listen, I traipse no I run no I sprint--a fat, impotent ghoul sprung straight from the cellar of my childhood home--past the pregnant girl with five skeletal children and the nun and the synagogue with its windows stoned through and I'm headed directly for my daughter, Sylvia, at her school where she's stationed with classmates of wannabe punks and black boys with their heads shaved and every one of them, apes, gushing out their hormones as I sprint to the edge of the Earth where Sylvia studies the canon of our national literature that I'm desperately trying to forget. ~ Leland Pitts-Gonzalez

My childhood home backed onto wheat and cotton fields. ~ Robert B. Laughlin

It is very likely an anxiety dream, brought on by your move out of your childhood home and the comfort of the reach of your family's love and protection." Gideon reached to stroke her hair soothingly. "I am only surprised it has not happened sooner."
"Are you sure?" Her nervousness was clear, but she was truly relaxing already.
"Yes. And so are you. You know everything there is to know about psychology, you tell me what you think."
"But you thought it was this . . . new level of ability."
"And for the first time in a millennium my diagnosis is wrong. I do despise it when such bothersome things occur. Now I shall have to start the 'No Mistakes' clock all over again."
Legna giggled at him, which was of course his intention. She swung her arms around his neck, hugging him warmly.
"You smell so good," he murmured against her ear a long minute later.
"I smell like sex," she argued.
He nodded, making a loud noise of appreciation as he sniffed and nibbled her neck.
"You smell like very good sex," he amended with a voracious growl and an eager mouth moving over her bare skin with bold appetite.
"Gideon!" She squealed as he went straight for her waist, knowing she was ticklish there. The playful flicker of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth drove her mad, and she twisted as she screamed for him to stop.
When he tickled her she absolutely could not use her classic escape method. She could barely catch her breath, never mind her ~ Jacquelyn Frank

... It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know. ~ Thomas Harris

What did you do?' I whisper to Aithinne. Aithinne pushes to her feet, dusting off her clothes.'I redirected its blast away from us so it used its weapon on itself. ' She scans the destruction.'Easy.' 'Ah, yes,' I murmur, trying to quell the emotions that rush through me at seeing my childhood home destroyed. 'Simple's sibling, Easy. I don't even want to imagine the levels of chaos that would prompt visits from their cousins Straightforward and Uncomplicated. ~ Elizabeth May

My Childhood Home I See Again
by Abraham Lincoln


My childhood home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.

O Memory! thou midway world
'Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise,

And, freed from all that's earthly vile,
Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.

As dusky mountains please the eye
When twilight chases day;
As bugle-notes that, passing by,
In distance die away;

As leaving some grand waterfall,
We, lingering, list its roar--
So memory will hallow all
We've known, but know no more.

Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them, to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How nought from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with ~ Abraham Lincoln

I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s. ~ Kim Edwards

Is it necessary, do you think,' he began, leaning in so close behind me that I could smell his breath, 'for the purpose of visiting your grandmother's childhood home, to dress like a kindergarten whore? ~ Danielle Wood

My childhood home in Coeur-de-Lune was now a vacation rental, managed by efficient strangers. I'd never gone back. But my mother kept a buzzing gossip line into her church women from town, and gave me sporadic updates on Casey's life.

She always brought Casey up when I was lulled into complacency. When we'd had a surprisingly peaceful afternoon together. When we were outside on her balcony, or sharing a piece of her peach pie like other mothers and daughters did.

Only then would she jab, a master fencer going for the unprotected sliver of my heart. ~ Amy Mason Doan

I listen to the phone-ins on the way home and I know how the fans feel. ~ Steven Gerrard

The nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in one's home port after a long voyage. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Our success as a global brand has been directly related to how we select locations where we are confident our particular clients desire to be. Los Cabos, Mexico is the ideal Engel & Volkers market, growing in popularity among world luxury travelers seeking exceptional properties for second home opportunities. ~ Anthony Hitt

But if she could be here, she probably wouldn't be here. But that won't stop me from ordering for two, and if I can't eat it all I'll take the leftovers home so I can heat up my loneliness and enjoy it for dinner tomorrow night. ~ Jarod Kintz

Whenever I'm home, I haven't got any makeup on. But even in the studio, before I do vocals, I put makeup on. ~ Robert Smith

Life on the open road is liberty ... to be alone, to have few needs, to be unknown, everywhere a foreigner and at home, and to walk grandly and solitarily in conquest of the world. ~ Isabelle Eberhardt

So on the Tuesday night deadline, while Abu Qatada was appealing to European Court judges, the Home Secretary, who thought the deadline was Monday night, was partying with X Factor judges. When the Home Secretary is accused of not knowing what day of the week it is, confusion and chaos have turned into farce. ~ Yvette Cooper

I'm here, little one," came a voice made for coaxing
secrets from the heart. "Sleep now. We'll talk when it's
time."
"Yes, sir," she said, now knowing where she was. She
surrendered to sleep again.
The most familiar darkness ... her darkness ... she was
home. ~ Tiffany Reisz

We ambled on to the gift store where I found a t-shirt that tickled my fancy. I also fell in love with a pen holder that looked like a family of spotted Nessies. I asked the clerk to first wrap the pen holder in some tissue paper and then in the t-shirt. My heart would be broken if it didn't survive the trip back home. There were some things a woman cannot live without. ~ Reyna Favis

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard. ~ Steve Earle

After a time, it seemed that the world inside the books became my world. So when I thought of my childhood, it was dandelion wine and ice cream on a summer porch, like Ray Bradbury, and catching catfish with Huck Finn. My own memories receded and the book memories became the real memories, far more than the outside, far more even than in here. ~ Rene Denfeld

Impending war was evidenced by the faraway expression in the older villagers' eyes, the shadows on their faces, not of fear but of sorrow. Because they knew; they had lived through the last war and they remembered the generation of young men who had marched off so willingly and never come back. Those too, like Daddy, who had made it home, but left in France a part of themselves that they could never recover. Who surrendered to moments, periodically, in which their eyes filmed and their lips whitened, and their minds gave over to sights and sounds they wouldn't share but couldn't shake. ~ Kate Morton

Sleep!
May be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things never changed, the apocalypse never happened, and everything's fine, normal, at home.
Or may be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things have changed, for the better, the apocalypse is over and there's light, hope and a new home.
Sleep, you crazy soul, just sleep. ~ Sanhita Baruah

I'm lively when I perform and I always put everything into a show, but when I get home I love lying down in front of the TV and relaxing. ~ John Barrowman

That's Hendrick's 19th home run. One more and he reaches double figures. ~ Jerry Coleman

Gossip till the cows come home. ~ John Le Carre

When I learned to build on my faith, the fear pretty much went away. I'm in a dark basement in a home that's demonically infested - that's not my idea of a fun evening, but again it boils down to your faith. That's your protection. That's the only protection we have. ~ Ralph Sarchie

Perhaps I can carry my home on my back, if home is nothing but this cocoon, in which I can write and feel fine. ~ Sheila Heti

Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on the McClellans, when they lived in Chicago. Never found a book. Uncle had a mixed record; antisocial. The girl? She was a time bomb. The family had been feeding her subconscious, I'm sure, from what I saw of her school record. She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. ~ Ray Bradbury

There isn't one tight little circle of cheaters and one tight little circle of honest students. Some kids cheat at home but not at school; some kids cheat at school but not at home. Whether or not a child cheated on, say, the word completion test was not an iron-clad predictor of whether he or she would cheat on, say, the underlining A's part of the speed test. If you gave the same group of kids the same test, under the same circumstances six months apart, Hartshorne and May found, the same kids would cheat in the same ways in both cases. But once you changed any of those variables-the material on the test, or the situation in which it was administered-the kinds of cheating would change as well. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to watch the brown earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the dogs. ~ Willa Cather

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home. ~ Carl Sagan

Like our home, this is a place that he has no right, but ultimately every right, to occupy. I ~ Suzanne Collins

Everyone's childhood is strange. It prepares you for the strangeness of adulthood." Riley ~ Janet Evanovich

They say a happy childhood is a lousy preparation for life. Kids who spend their playground days fat, ginger or gay know the truth. ~ Adam Baker

What was worse than losing you was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. ~ Penelope Douglas

I hate formal stuff. I love looking like a doll and all that stuff and playing dress up, but when I'm home, sweat pants, t-shirt. When I'm in the studio, sweat pants, t-shirt. ~ Nicki Minaj

Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper, a cook, a cheering squad and another paycheck. When a woman marries, she gets a boarder. To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion. ~ Duke Of Wellington

A thought come in my mind, have the people of Gujarat elected me to adorn my home? NO ... if I want to adorn something. It will not be my home. It will be my Gujarat. ~ Narendra Modi

I'm not a natural employer. I live very privately, and we like our privacy at home. To be sitting and talking with your wife or your family and to have somebody walking around and you're ignoring them, I couldn't handle that at all. I can barely handle a cleaning lady coming in every so often. ~ Jim Carter

In a family, parents, grandparents and children feel at home; no one is excluded. If someone has a problem, even a serious one, even if he brought it upon himself, the rest of the family comes to his assistance; they support him ... Should the same not happen in society? ~ Pope Francis

But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing ~ Abigail Thomas

These were desperate times, the two men agreed; it was easy to stay at home and pull the bedcovers over your heads, but if nothing was done, someone would rip the bedcovers from your face and tug you naked into the street. ~ Edward Carey

I can't drag myself away from 'Final Cut Pro.' It is a digital video editing system. I am obsessed with it, but I am always away from home, and I can't use it. ~ Margaret Cho

The world is a chaotic place find a love that doesn't allow a home to have the same feeling. ~ Nikki Rowe

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you. ~ Salman Rushdie

Even now, my husband Jerry, our son Matthew and I live only five minutes away from my parents home, and my brothers live about ten minutes away. It's been great having such a supportive family. ~ Nancy Kerrigan

I am concerned that my children will grow up sheltered from the public. I am concerned that the children get to experience childhood and youth in their time without constant monitoring. It has been very important for both the Crown Prince and myself. ~ Mette-Marit, Crown Princess Of Norway

When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. ~ Ilona Andrews

Honestly, I'd rather be anywhere else. Even home, where my dad begins almost every conversation with, "You should lose the black clothes and wear something with color." Puh-lease. Like I want to look like every Barbie clone in Hell High, a.k.a. Oklahoma's insignificant Haloway High School. Ironically, Dad doesn't appreciate the bright blue streaks in my originally blond/now-dyed-black hair. Go figure. That's color, right? ~ Gena Showalter

Geography is the study of earth as the home of people ~ Yi-Fu Tuan

O Stranger, send the news home to the people of Sparta that here we
Are laid to rest: the commands they gave us have been obeyed.

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

[Epitaph of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae] ~ Simonides

I can't face the idea of riding home on a busful of sweaty, smiling teeth sucking up my oxygen. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory. ~ Buzz Aldrin