Childhood Memoir Quotes

Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childhood though everything had to be shared. If she tried to hold anything back, they would search and find the hidden places. Her written words, discovered, read were just the source of more pain and punishment. This was why she loved poetry. They did not always understand it so they left it alone. ~ Bell Hooks

Do you remember the unbidden summer rain
Washing the dew from mulberries away?

Can you forget the scent of honey over fields,
And those amber-colored acorns beads…

And crowds of singing motley birds
Around the foggy, misty lake?

That's where our childhood mirth
Will be remained as a fairy-tale… ~ Sahara Sanders

Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, for not being willing to sacrifice words for desire. Struck by writing a book that disrupts. There are many ways to be hit. Pain is the price we pay to speak the truth. ~ Bell Hooks

In life, we all have a cross to bear and a unique story to tell. We just hope that someone will take the time to listen. ~ Greg McVicker

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Think, for a moment, of the countless happy childhood hours you spent with this amazing device: Drawing perfect horizontals, drawing perfect verticals, drawing really spastic diagonals, trying to scrape away the silver powder from the window so you could look inside. ~ Dave Barry

If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life. ~ Linus Roache

My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn't have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school. ~ Faith Evans

The myth of childhood happiness flourishes so wildly not because it satisfies the needs of children but because it satisfies the needs of adults. In a culture of alienated people, the belief that everyone has at least one good period in life free of care and drudgery dies hard. And obviously you can't expect it in your old age. So it must be you've already had it. ~ Shulamith Firestone

Adolescence--the time when teens begin to do things adults do--now happens later. Thirteen-year-olds--and even 18-year-olds-- are less likely to act like adults and spend their time like adults. They are more likely, instead, to act like children--not by being immature, necessarily, but by postponing the usual activities of adults. Adolescence is now an extension of childhood rather than the beginning of adulthood. ~ Jean M. Twenge

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood. ~ Gertrude Stein

Into every sunny life a little rain must fall. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love. ~ Aspen Matis

that dressing room for an hour as my mother pretended to be making up her mind about buying that dress she could never afford. And from that day on we never saw her adorn her glorious hair with a single blossom, nor was she ever in our long childhood ~ Pat Conroy

We want the world to focus on children whose lives have been devastated by AIDS. The millions of children who are missing their parents; their childhood, their future but most importantly, they are missing YOU. Everyone can make a real difference. Your voice is needed in a global movement that can change their world. ~ Pierce Brosnan

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We don't choose the experience but we do choose how we react to the experience we have. Choose to be positive, choose to be helpful, choose to be happy. ~ Paula Coffer

In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance. ~ Lady Gregory

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

I believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never. ~ Anna Jameson

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn't find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it. ~ Elena Ferrante

My childhood dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to end up in TV and film. It's kind of flipped, and I'm not mad about it, but my childhood dream is Broadway and I want to end up there. ~ Grant Gustin

What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol' man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Trauma can have a masking effect. ~ Asa Don Brown

Whatever you have received more than others in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life, all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. You must pay a price for it. You must render in return an unusually great sacrifice of your life for other life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

In early childhood (as, perhaps, after death) a person extends in all directions at the same time, so we can say he still doesn't exist yet- the personality comes into being later, when an attachment to some particular direction appears. ~ Victor Pelevin

The Lord's Prayer is found in Matthew 6. In verse 12 Jesus says, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (NKJV). When God talks about debts, He's not just talking about monetary debts. He's talking about the times when people hurt you, the times when people do you wrong. God refers to that as a debt because when you are mistreated, you may feel you are owed something.
Human nature says, "I was wronged. Now I want justice. You mistreated me. Now you've got to pay me back." But the mistake many people make is in trying to collect a debt that only God can pay. The father can't give his daughter's innocence back to her. Your parents can't pay you back for not having a loving childhood. Your spouse can't pay you back for the pain he caused by being unfaithful. Only God can truly pay you back.
If you want to be restored and whole, get on God's payroll. He knows how to make things right. He knows how to bring justice. He'll give you what you deserve. Leave it up to Him. Quit expecting people to make it up to you. They can't give you what they don't have. ~ Joel Osteen

The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes. ~ Marina Abramovic

I'm pretty mad at horror films for ruining my childhood. ~ Haley Bennett

They had grown out of childhood in the last few days. Christmas as Christmas had passed unnoticed since their father had died on Christmas day. Neeley's thirteenth birthday had been lost somewhere in those last few days. They came to the brilliantly lighted façade of a big vaudeville house. Since they were reading children and read everything they came across, they stopped and automatically read the list of acts playing that week. Underneath the sixth act, was an announcement in large letters. 'Here next week! Chauncy Osborne, Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs. Don't miss him!' Sweet Singer... Sweet Singer... Francie had not shed a tear since her father's death. Neither had Neeley. Now Francie felt that all the tears she had were frozen together in her throat in a solid lump and the lump was growing... growing. She felt that if the lump didn't melt soon and change back into tears, she too would die. She looked at Neeley. Tears were falling out of his eyes. Then her tears came, too. They turned into a dark side street and sat on the edge of the sidewalk with their feet in the gutter. Neeley, though weeping, remembered to spread his handkerchief on the curb so that his new long pants wouldn't get dirty. They sat close together because they were cold and lonesome. They wept long and quietly, sitting there in the cold street. At last, when they could cry no more, they talked. ~ Betty Smith

I felt if I went chronologically, I'd get bogged down in childhood and that's part of our culture of complaint in America. This endless wailing about your childhood. ~ Edmund White

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 ... ~ John Geddes

It's hard to say. Sometimes people have had terrible childhoods. And sometimes they just haven't found their special place in life. And sometimes they're dogs from hell and must be destroyed. ~ Charles Addams

If we are serious about combating the childhood obesity epidemic and improving child nutrition, then everyone must chip in
parents, schools, and yes even Congress. ~ Tom Harkin

when you allow that man. to walk through your children. plant his feet. in their veins. hold their voices. necks. bodies. inside his violence. you are no longer a mother. when you give him the key to that door. because you need to be loved by someone. you have seasoned them for the wolf. burned their childhood into a fantasy. it's going to take a third of their lives. all the courage. from their cells to their hair. to learn the alchemetic formula that turns that kind of betrayal. a demothering. soft. liveable. – before you get that key made ~ Nayyirah Waheed