I have such a hopeless dream of walking or being there at night, nothing happens, I just pass, everything is unbearably over with.

Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

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

Spanking a child is about the parent not the child. The child will learn more from positive correction than physical manipulation.

Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that's why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.

When you are a grown up your brothers become your neighbors and your unconditional brotherhood become your conditional neighborhood.

Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.

He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all.

I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.

That's the beautiful thing about innocence; even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with.

Guys like Henry and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids' version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones.

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think (puff) my friend, you have had a pretty poor life.