“I was as curious as the devil. Couldn't have been older than sixteen months when I started wandering out of the house by myself. I was a handful. Had to be kept on a short leash.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I remember Mama poured me milk and tried to show me how to drink from a cup, but I wouldn't wait. I didn't want to be shown anything. I took the cup and spilled the milk all over me.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Cozie and James also noticed my musical nature when I was still an infant. They said I was fixated on jukeboxes. I'd toddle over and point to one particular song -- "Honky Tonk Train Blues" by Meade Lux Lewis, a hot boogie-woogie instrumental. I'd holler until someone put a nickel in the box and pla…”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Sounds weird, but I have memory flashes of being slipped into bureaus, where I'd pick up my little head and peek out to survey the scene. I've always been a peeker, eager to check out the world.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Cozie could be cold-blooded. Even though my name, "Jamesetta," was formed from "James" (her husband) and "Cozetta," she didn't want to adopt me. She thought I'd hurt her business.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“I had two mothers, two childhoods, lived two different lives in two different cities. Maybe that's why I became two different people.”— Etta James, amazon.com
“Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude.”— Etta James, books.google.com.ph
“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”— Ocean Vuong, newyorker.com
“Maybe a survivor is nothing but the last one to come home, the final monarch that lands on a branch already weighted with ghosts.”— Ocean Vuong, newyorker.com
“It only takes a single night of frost to kill off an entire generation. To live, then, is a matter of time, of timing.”— Ocean Vuong, newyorker.com
“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”— Neil Gaiman, amazon.com
“Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?”— Anton Chekhov, amazon.com
“Self-esteem comes from who you have in your life. How you were raised. What you struggled with as a child.”— Halle Berry, tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com
“The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”— Mary Shelley, amazon.com
“If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.”— Beatrix Potter, amazon.com
“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child.”— Beatrix Potter, amazon.com
“What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life.”— Beatrix Potter, amazon.com
“For a kid, sex can be messy, horrible, embarrassing and third-rate. 'See you later,' as you run off into the bushes with a smirk on your face.”— John Lydon, latimesblogs.latimes.com