Childrens Lit Quotes

We create our work for children not because they're "cute," but because they're human beings, deserving of respect. ~ Mo Willems

As a children's minister, I always believed that I was an evangelist, and at the end of the book, there's a simple prayer that, whoever's reading the book could accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior ~ Soraya Diase Coffelt

Greetings, Mother!" I say sarcastically when I walk through the front door. "Greetings, Father!"
No one responds.
This is beyond stupid.
"Greetings, family," I scream.
"What are you doing?" calls Hunter from upstairs.
"Children's Home Rule number one: Children will greet their parents when they come home, and say good-bye to them when they leave."
"Oh my God, are you like, reverting?"
"Greetings, Brother."
A pause.
"Greetings, Sister. ~ Sarah Skilton

We read a lot of books. Children's books mostly, because they're always much more truthful than adult books. And much more entertaining, said Mrs. Bunny. ~ Polly Horvath

I rise today in strong support of the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act, because it is a commonsense way to protect our schoolchildren from pedophiles. ~ Ric Keller

... everything was fresh, green and particularly beautiful. Afternoon light, filtering between remnants of monsoon clouds, picked out gullies and spot-lit patches of forest and scrub on the convoluted ridges of the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. Or, after a rainstorm, wisps of clouds clung to the trees as if scared to let go. Behind, himals peeked out shyly between the clouds. ~ Jane Wilson-Howarth

...we should never grow so old, or change so much, that we cannot find room in our hearts for the wisdom of children's books. ~ Judith Viorst

We who have the power to make choices disproportionately shape outcomes and limit options for people who don't have the power to make choices. It follows that if we don't share the power to make choices, we will never see a change to those things we say are bad or unacceptable to our society. When those of us who have the means maximize our own children's and our own families' advantages, we are contributing to strengthening norms about achievement, success/failure, that undermine our fellow citizens' well-being. ~ You Yenn Teo

Clearly, children's charities struggle to find private sources of money to sustain their benevolent programs. ~ Dana Rohrabacher

The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass ...
... and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night.
My God ... what have we done? ~ Neal Shusterman

Can we go to Alum Bay, please?" Snugs asked the moose, his little nose twitching with excitement, and his voice a little faster than usual because he couldn't wait ~ Suzy Davies

Emotional damage is never easy to measure, but mothers who are alive but psychically absent impose filial burdens which knot their children's feelings in a way biologic orphans are spared. ~ Eileen Simpson

What is Gornite? Why can't you heat it? Will it make you laugh? - I hope so ~ Lucas Riddle

The problem is, with a lot of children's films, they are very commercial. ~ Michel Gondry

There's a different flavor to children's literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up. ~ Mizuki Nomura

Our revulsion towards cutting the genitals of girls should give us pause, however, for the themes the Western world abhors – removing part of the genitals to reduce sexual pleasure, carving children's bodies to conform to certain social ideals, visiting pain on helpless children – are all fully present in the history of male circumcision. ~ David L. Gollaher

The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their children's children's children might be a different color is something very alarming to them - in short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image. ~ William S. Burroughs

People don't realize how much the food industry has infiltrated all aspects of our children's lived experience, including their experience at school. There are sponsored curricula by food companies, they're also in our schools with logos sponsoring sports teams. ~ Anna Lappe

...America went off the track somewhere--back around the time of the Civil War, or pretty soon afterwards. Instead of going ahead and developing along the line in which the country started out, it got shunted off in another direction...Suddenly we realize that America has turned into something ugly...and the worst of it is the intellectual dishonesty which all this corruption has bred...People are afraid to think straight--afraid to face themselves...We've become like a nation of advertising men, all hiding behind catch phrases like "prosperity" and "rugged individualism" and "the American way." And the real things like freedom, and equal opportunity and the integrity and worth of the individual...they have become just words too. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I was still hoping that it might be a phase, that I'd wake up the next day and be normal. In the best of times, it seemed like such a short leap. I did fantasize about having a girlfriend - never the sex part, but the rest of it I had down. I knew what she'd look like and how she'd hold her long hair back from the flame when bending over a lit candle. I imagined us getting married the summer after I graduated from college, and then I imagined her drowning off the coast of North Carolina during one of my family's vacations. Everyone needed to be there so they could see just how devastated I was. I could actually make myself cry by picturing it: How I'd carry her out of the water, how my feet would sink into the sand owing to the extra weight. I'd try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and keep trying until someone, my father most often, would pull me back, saying, "It's too late, son. Can't you see she's gone?"

It seemed I wanted to marry just so I could be a widower. So profound would be my grief that I'd never look at another woman again. It was perfect, really. Oh, there were variations. Sometimes she'd die of leukemia, as in the movie Love Story. Occasionally a madman's bullet would fell her during a hostage situation, but always I'd be at her side, trying everything in my power to bring her back.

The fantasy remained active until I was twenty. Funny how unimportant being gay became once I told somebody. All I had to do was open up to my best friend, and w ~ David Sedaris

By the late 20th century, the idea that parents can harm their children by abusing and neglecting them (which is true) grew into the idea that parents can mold their children's intelligence, personalities, social skills, and mental disorders (which is not). Why not? Consider the fact that children of immigrants end up with the accent, values, and norms of their peers, not of their parents. That tells us that children are socialized in their peer group rather than in their families: it takes a village to raise a child. And studies of adopted children have found that they end up with personalities and IQ scores that are correlated with those of their biological siblings but uncorrelated with those of their adopted siblings. That tells us that adult personality and intelligence are shaped by genes, and also by chance (since the correlations are far from perfect, even among identical twins), but are not shaped by parents, at least not by anything they do with all their children. ~ Steven Pinker

His rest was thing and lit by the crudely poetic dreams only adolescent boys have, dreams where sexual attraction and romantic love come together and resonate more powerfully than they ever will again. ~ Stephen King

Tequila--a sure cure for monogamy. ~ Lois Greiman

When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and "discover themselves." The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers

For their lives, for their children's lives, they will give up what little freedom they had left. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Picture yourself, Jack, a confirmed homebody, a sedentary fellow who finds himself walking in a deep wood. You spot something out of the corner of your eye. Before you know anything else, you know that this thing is very large and that it has no place in your ordinary frame of reference. A flaw in the world picture. Either it shouldn't be here or you shouldn't. Now the thing comes into full view. It is a grizzly bear, enormous, shiny brown, swaggering, dripping slime from its bared fangs. Jack, you have never seen a large animal in the wild. The sight of this grizzer is so electrifyingly strange that it gives you a renewed sense of yourself, a fresh awareness of the self - the self in terms of a unique and horrific situation. You see yourself in a new and intense way. You rediscover yourself. You are lit up for your own imminent dismemberment. The beast on hind legs has enabled you to see who you are as if for the first time, outside familiar surroundings, alone, distinct, whole. The name we give this complicated process is fear. [...]

Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.
(p. 218) ~ Don DeLillo

Work or suffering found her listless and dejected, powerles and repining; but gaiety expanded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Most bullies are the product of a stressful and often abusive home life. Next time a bully threatens or attacks you, just yell, 'Don't abuse me like your parents abuse you!' Then call children's services and tell them you saw this bully crying in the bathroom and you're worried about him. Bam! He just got moved to a foster home. ~ Eugene Mirman

Sarah...loved the way the light lit the silence first thing in the morning. ~ Niamh Boyce

Here is a list of paper products more valuable than a degree from @Mizzou: A blank piece of paper, toilet paper, and newspaper in a lit fireplace. ~ Jarod Kintz

Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?"
Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children. ~ J.M. Barrie

I felt responsible to use my gifts, but in future churches, that pointed in the direction of children's or music ministry. But, like many women in the church whom I knew, I felt neither a call nor a predisposition to children or song. ~ Alan F. Johnson

Your boyfriend smells bad, says Sarah as she sniffs the armpit of the giant sweatshirt.
All boys smell bad I say and she nods her head like we have just figured out something very important. ~ Amy Reed

First Moloch, horrid king, besmirched in blood, Of Human sacrifice, and parent's tears, Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their childrens' cries unheard, that passed through fire, To his grim idol. ~ John Milton

The lightning girl is easier to read than the pages of a children's book. ~ Victoria Aveyard