#Childhood

"How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood."

"One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep."

"My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable."

"Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets."

"I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor."

"We all know that the great memories of our childhood are the little triumphs - it doesn't really matter whether that was in writing, art, on the hockey field or on the football field. It's something that makes you feel - 'I can do this stuff.'"

"I know how syrupy this sounds, how dull, provincial, and possibly whitewashed, but what can I do? Happy childhoods happen"

"It's hard to say. Sometimes people have had terrible childhoods. And sometimes they just haven't found their special place in life. And sometimes they're dogs from hell and must be destroyed."

"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood."

"You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic."

"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose."

"The Lord has been there from wanting to be a momma, to having a wonderful childhood life and dreaming of having a good motherhood as a child; always wanting to meet a good old country boy and having someone to love as much as I love my husband Roland and having a little boy that is a mixture of the both of us."

"(An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours."

"and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful."

"There is much that I do not know and I'd like to know even less."

"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

"Play is the highest form of research."

"My parents are going to kill me!""That seems rather harsh..."

"When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser."

"That's what makes it so right. Your eyes—your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That's the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you've seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become."