“We produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.”— Alice Miller, alice-miller.com
“Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.”— Harry Stack Sullivan, facebook.com
“That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”— L. M. Montgomery, amazon.com
“Everything we are is anchored in our childhoods. The drama comes in how we deal with it. Are we slaves to our past, or can we rise above it? This is the stuff of great stories.”— Robert Crais, articles.sun-sentinel.com
“I was the kind of child who always looked for fairies dancing on the grass. I wanted to believe in witches, wizards, ogres, giants and enchanted spells. I didn’t want all of the magic taken out of the world by scientific explorations.”— V.C Andrews, amazon.com
“When I was young, I used to have this thing where I wanted to see everything. I used to think, ‘How can I die without seeing every inch of this world?’”— Leonardo Dicaprio, peggy8_8.tripod.com
“We are not born feeling inadequate. Life experiences and emotions create that sense within us in a variety of creative ways. For example, when we were little and we felt afraid or anxious, our mind told us something was wrong with us, not with our environment. That's why children who were abused or…”— Hilary Jacobs Hendel, hilaryjacobshendel.com
“It’s funny, when you’re a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you’re on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me.”— Fannie Flagg, amazon.com
“I was a very shy child. I remember being in a kindergarten open house with my mother and children saying 'Hi' to me and I still remember feeling this way — but I don't know why — but I wouldn't even say 'Hi' back. I was that shy. I remember her gripping my hand and saying, 'You say hi.' ... I was pr…”— Jim Parsons, npr.org
“My first memories are from when I was very little, maybe three or four years old playing in my neighbourhood at home. I can picture myself with the ball at my feet from a very young age.”— Lionel Messi, worldsoccer.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
“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”— Alain de Botton, twitter.com
“When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.”— Neil Gaiman, amazon.com
“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books.”— C. S. Lewis, amazon.com
“I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone – as it seems to me – is in danger.”— Andrei Tarkovsky, brainpickings.org
“I always wanted that Disney Channel Californian skateboarding childhood, but I never got it.”— Darcie Wilder, villagevoice.com
“Before the Internet, you could laze around on a park bench in Chicago reading some Dean Koontz, and that would be a legit thing to do and no one would ever know you had done it unless you told them.”— Emma Rathbone, newyorker.com
“Childhood passions that seem like fads, sometimes even totally unproductive, could be mediums for experiencing the virtuous cycle of curiosity: discovering, trying, failing and growing.”— Zach Klein, linkedin.com
“All I remember of my childhood is one day it wasn't there anymore.”— Umberto Contarello, Paolo Sorrentino, Lenny Belardo, Jude Law, imdb.com