Pastoral Resources

I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

I alone, as the sharer of their way of life, presented a replica of childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.

My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.

Mexico is only a memory of childhood safety.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

In childhood I developed a serious throat infection, and my heart stopped beating. I recovered from that illness with a voice that boomed forth like Kate Smith's!

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.

If only my folks had beaten me, I could have gotten some material about my miserable childhood. But as it is, I've had a great life.

I didn't grow up with my mother, and so losing her for real was like, some sort of latent childhood, some sort of unresolved issue. When she left for real, it was sort of like, I was done.

My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.

The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.