Children
Quotes - Children read the internal meanings of everything
“And a mother without
children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing.
Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt,
which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease
to exist.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The
Space Between Us
“For many years I have been
asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The
simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that
children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I
thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do
it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear
destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at,
thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to
stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking
habits into which their fears have driven them.
What
is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little
said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they
see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is
when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear
escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in
their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in
school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good
soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to
them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and
war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad,
destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the
best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.”
― John Holt, How
Children Fail
“It's only adults who read
the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of
everything.”
― Maurice Sendak, The
Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present
“I want you to be careful in
this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”
― Jeff Zentner, The
Serpent King
“He looked the boy up and
down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was
supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.”
― John Boyne, The Boy
in the Striped Pajamas
“I know that big people don't
like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's
school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did
they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.”
― Frank McCourt,
Angela’s Ashes
“What are men? Children who
doubt.”
― Derek Walcott, The
Odyssey
“Single parents - both women
and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and
gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it
comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved
and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it
comes in.”
― Michael Kimmel,
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
“Had I catalogued the
downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would
never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like
this:
1.
Hassle.
2.
Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.)
3.
Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends
and their insufferable parents.)
4.
Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My
sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy
that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots
mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was,
and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.)
5.
Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was
best for someone else. (I'm a pig.)
6.
Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.)
7.
Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the
outset, admit this to myself.)
8.
Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's
five-year-old in the room.)
9.
Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow,
every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less
seriously.)
10.
Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she
can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides,
what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother
would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's
life is hideous, too.)”
― Lionel Shriver, We
Need to Talk About Kevin
“God knows everything we need
to know, so let God be God and let it all go.”
― Carolyn Cutler
Hughes, Through God's Eye
“Childhood is cannibals and
psychotics vomiting in your mouth!”
― Maurice Sendak
“But the wild things cried,
“Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!”
And
Max said, “No!”
The
wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and
rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into
his private boat and waved goodbye.”
― Maurice Sendak
