Childhood Returns Quotes

When the windows like the jackal's eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled forebodings descend the buildings' steps. The best thing is to flee from the great feather cylinders when the hunters limp into the sodden lands. If you take a bath in the watery patterns of the streets, childhood returns to the country like a greyhound. Man seeks his prey in the breezes and the fruits are drying on the screens of pink paper, in the shadow of the names overgrown by forgetfulness. Joys and sorrows spread in the town. Gold and eucalyptus, similarly scented, attack dreams. Among the bridles and the dark edelweiss subterranean forms are resting like perfumers' corks. ~ Andre Breton

Every summer, like the roses, childhood returns. ~ Marty Rubin

My childhood wasn't easy. I buried myself in books. I guess I'm a recovering book addict. ~ Katherine Reay

Too Young

(Written at twelve years of age)

Too young for love
Too young to know
How far a touch
A kiss can go

Too old for comfort
Or childhood charms
Too old to be held
In my mother's arms

The world is hard
When you're in between
Your future world
And childhood dreams ~ Lang Leav

Cinema returns us to anima, religion of matter, which gives each thing its special divinity and sees gods in all things and beings. Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science. ~ Jim Morrison

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor. ~ Nile Rodgers

I had an amazing childhood and always loved to sing and dance, but there were moments where I had ups and downs with my health that often tested me as it does many people. I've never hidden the fact that my health was sometimes not on my side, but I've never let it define me or deter me from my dreams. ~ Jessie J.

The first album I ever bought with my own money was 'Ten.' Every single song reminds me of my childhood. ~ Aaron Paul

Another step is that daughters can learn to monitor their own feelings and instincts by saying, "I feel uncomfortable (angry, dominated, usurped, inadequate, guilty, furious) with my mother more often than I do not. I have to pay attention to that, because it shows in how I treat my friends (lover, spouse, kids, colleagues). There is validity here. I don't have to blame or excuse my mother-I just have to see her so I can see myself. ~ Victoria Secunda

One study found that people who smile in childhood photographs are less likely to get a divorce. ~ Jenna McCarthy

I had a great childhood, a very close-knit family. We were all overweight, and we had good times eating together, I imagine. ~ Stephen Furst

A smart policy should be one that tends to receive the capitals, pays the price for that capital - which is the interest - returns the capital and in the end the factories, the industries, are left to remain in the country. ~ Fidel Castro

And if I sit in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I am not? ~ John Logan

The first person I knew who died was Beth March. I cried for three days. ~ A. Louise Robertson

So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home," but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began.
In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child's - Dorothy's point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn't focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child's faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn't articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed.
Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children's voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the ~ Salman Rushdie

Like earth, awake, and warm, and bright
With joy the spirit moves and burns;
So up to thee! O Fount of Light!
Our light returns. ~ John Sterling

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments. ~ Joseph Murray

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

Marya pinned out her childhood like a butterfly. She considered it the way a mathematician considers an equation. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Each day, at the same time, Jude would return and they would be there, led by Webb, whose life could not have been more different than his. Where Webb's memories of childhood were idyllic and earthy, Jude's reeked of indifference. Webb read fantasy; Jude read realism. Webb believed a tree house was the perfect place for gaining a different perspective on the world; Jude saw it as perfect for surveillance and working out who or what was a threat to them. They argued about sport codes and song lyrics. Jude saw the rain-dirty valley; Webb saw Brigadoon. Yet, despite all this, they connected, and the nights they spent in the tree house discussing their brave new worlds and not so brave emotions made everything else in their lives insignificant. Somehow the world of Webb and Fitz and Tate and Narnie became the focus of Jude's life. ~ Melina Marchetta

Young children are for the most part just and moral. They love preachy stories because they do in fact understand that actions have consequences. Yet they turn to adults for the mercy and subtlety that they themselves can't yet summon. And who can blame them? They are still little and vulnerable, uncompromising to a fault. . . . they want an adult's protection from their own rough justice. This, I think, is the one true story of early childhood, the yin and yang of being a small person.

It's confusing emotional terrain for children to inhabit, and we must guide them gently through it. Is it intimacy you want, or freedom? Protection or power? Childhood is a kind of enslavement, but it's a liberation, too. Young children's emotions are all about this basic conflict. Feed me. Hold me. Comfort me. Fix me. I hate you! I can do it myself. ~ Erika Christakis

In this manner , we are told, the system of the imaginary is spread circularly, by detours and returns the length of an empty subject. ~ Roland Barthes

I do hear from people at my exhibition about seeing these things made from this toy from their childhood, and it brings them back. They'll go and buy a set of Lego from the gift shop because of that nostalgia and seeing it at the art exhibition. ~ Nathan Sawaya

I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy. ~ Marcel Carne

Play with your dolls for not more than half an hour, no more than fifteen minutes, no more than a second, a millisecond. If you learned math as fast as you ran outside to play, then you might be a genius. But you do not and you are not. You're a hole where knowledge goes to sleep. ~ Weike Wang

Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. ~ Mary Karr

He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it. ~ Josephine Tey

It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had been one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing, keeping up with Jem, and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess. ~ Harper Lee

Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel. ~ Andre Maurois

It seems very strange ... that in the course of the world's history so obvious an improvement should never have been adopted ... The next generation of Britishers would be the better for having had this extra hour of daylight in their childhood. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet. ~ Alain De Botton

You'd never have gotten it right. You have to hit the door just so. It took me weeks to learn."
"And what were you doing sneaking out at night?" he demanded.
"I fail to see how that is your business."
"You became my business when you took up residence
in my house."
"Well, I wouldn't have moved in if you hadn'tkidnapped me!"
"I wouldn't have kidnapped you if you hadn't been wandering about the countryside with no thought to
your own safety."
"I was certainly safer in the countryside than I was at Prewitt Hall, and you well know it."
"You wouldn't be safe in a convent," he muttered.
"If you two lovebirds can stop snapping at each other," James cut in, "I'd like to search the study before
Prewitt returns home."
Blake glared at Caroline as if this entire delay were her fault, causing her to hiss, "Don't forget that if it
weren't for me-"
"If it weren't for you," he shot back, "I would be a very happy man indeed."
"We are wasting time," James reminded them. "The both of you may remain here, if you cannot cease
your squabbling, but I am going in to search the south drawing room."
"I'll go first," Caroline announced, "since I know the way."
"You'll go behind me," Blake contradicted, "and give me directions as we go along."
"Oh, for the love of Saint Peter," James finally burst out, exasperation showing in every line of his body.
"I'll go first, if only to shut the ~ Julia Quinn

I had spent enough time in France to know that the words 'chez moi' meant something a thousand times more profound than one's current home. 'Chez moi' was the place your parents came from, or maybe even the region of your parents' parents. The food you ate at Christmas, your favorite kind of cheese, your best childhood memories of summer vacation -- all of these derived from 'chez moi.' And even if you had never lived there, 'chez moi' was knitted into your identity; it colored the way you viewed the world and the way the world viewed you. ~ Ann Mah

I spent all of my childhood at a performance art camp. Putting on plays, it was more like commedia dell'arte. It wasn't career-oriented in any way. It was more fun and therapeutic, so I never really thought of it as something I would end up doing. I was more convinced I was going to be a painter. ~ Troy Garity

How beautiful it is to feel that what you cannot describe? ~ Saim .A. Cheeda

The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago. ~ Warren Buffett

That is why success and fruitfulness depend as much upon focusing on the "who" you are as much as the "what" of the work you do. Invest in your character, and it will give you the returns that you are looking for by only investing in the work itself. You can't do the latter without the former. ~ Henry Cloud

All an investor can do is follow a consistently disciplined and rigorous approach; over time the returns will come ~ Seth Klarman

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it - the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. […]

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete.

"But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments."

Then he should have no time to believe. ~ William Kingdon Clifford

The Gap has always been an iconic, go-to brand that reminds me of my childhood. ~ Theophilus London