Anything For My Child Quotes & Sayings

This time, there are no tears. This time, there is only emptiness and I feel it set in the straight line of my mouth. I am not strong enough for this. I want an earthquake, a hurricane, anything - even a devil, the one with the cloven hoof - Mrs. Leed's unfortunate 13th child - to rush out and stomp on me, break me into little pieces and hurl me to the stars, let me go back with those people I love. Please. — Kathleen DeMarco

For my part, I never talk to the child about time. We talk about other things
though not about anything much
and never about tomorrow. For me that is impossible. Tomorrow we could all be wiped out. You think back upon all the promises you did not manage to keep. Talk about time and you will always end up making promises. Then it is better to say nothing at all, no matter what. — Peter Hoeg

Metallica came along for me at a time and had an affect on me that I feel is the most pivotal moment of my life. I don't think there's been anything else that's even come close that's affected me in the way that that band did when I was a child when I was 11 or 12 years old, and where it went from there. — Jeff Kendrick

I do not expect my child's respect.
just because i have given birth to their life.
does not mean they owe me.
anything.
what i want most
is to look into my child's eyes
and
see
that i have given birth
to
a
heart.
have
honored.
held and feed.
someones
heart.
from the moment we first met.
and
they love me for it. — Nayyirah Waheed

I have a folder that's labeled "The Folder of 24." Inside it are letters from twenty-four people who were actively in the process of planning their suicide, but who stopped and got help - not because of what I wrote on my blog, but because of the amazing response from the community of people who read it and said, "Me too." They were saved by the people who wrote about losing their mother or father or child to suicide and how they'd do anything to go back and convince them not to believe the lies mental illness tells you. They were saved by the people who offered up encouragement and songs and lyrics and poems and talismans and mantras that worked for them and that might work for a stranger in need. There are twenty-four people alive today who are still here because people were brave enough to talk about their struggles, or compassionate enough to convince others of their worth, or who simply said, "I don't understand your illness, but I know that the world is better with you in it. — Jenny Lawson

Lainey, you may not be my biological daughter, but you are a daughter to me. I can't be your dad if you don't let me, and I understand, but I will always be waiting for you if you want me. It's not an offer I will trade or give up. I love you as if you were my child. Don't ever forget that. You can tell me anything. — Krista McLaughlin

Mitch shook his head. "Amazing. You'd literally do anything wouldn't you?" Turning a pointed look on her hand, he lifted it from his arm and dropped it. "Frankly, Ms. Price, I'd sooner stick my dick in a meat grinder. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a stolen child to find. Impossible as it may for you to comprehend, he's a hell of a lot more important than you. — Tami Hoag

This was a new buzz, better than anything I'd tried before. For the first time, I could fight back at others. I'd even fight with a parked car! I was totally kyboshed on these drugs, I didn't care how many boys were standing outside the pub, I'd run over and fight the lot of them. Even though I came off second best, in my mind, I still walked away a winner. I showed them I wasn't a little shit-bag that always got battered, not when I had the drugs in me. — Stephen Richards

I have a dog at home, and that's my baby. She's my girl, and I would do absolutely anything for her. She's like a child to me. — Michael Graziadei

If anything, I believe that when I die, I will have to stand in front of all the children who went to bed hungry while I was on earth and read aloud a list of my eBay purchases. I shudder to think of it. Explaining to a poor child with a swollen belly why I didn't give his village fifty cents a week but spent twenty-seven dollars in a bidding war for a Mars Attacks coffee cup. — Dana Gould

Do I regret getting married? It's hard for me to say anything because ultimately we're talking about the mother of my child. — Alec Baldwin

Eighty two percent of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD.15 Because they often are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive pseudoscientific diagnoses such as "oppositional defiant disorder," meaning "This kid hates my guts and won't do anything I tell him to do," or "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder," meaning he has temper tantrums. Having as many problems as they do, these kids accumulate numerous diagnoses over time. Before they reach their twenties, many patients have been given four, five, six, or more of these impressive but meaningless labels. If they receive treatment at all, they get whatever is being promulgated as the method of management du jour: medications, behavioral modification, or exposure therapy. These rarely work and often cause more damage. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

To ask any parent to suffer the loss of a child is to ask more than any parent can possibly give. But to deny any individual the right to walk the path they have chosen, because we cannot imagine our lives without them, carries a heavy price. You have never known this because you have never faced this choice. You've never had to sacrifice anything, because of your power to alter reality to suit your whims. I understand this truth. We mortals have tried to soften it in platitudes. 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' 'Death before dishonor.' In the end, nothing makes it easier to accept. I've given my life once for those I love, and I'm about to do it again. To have made any other choice was to grant fear dominion. Your son is a remarkable individual. Don't ask him to be less than he is. He has made his choice. — Kirsten Beyer

My mother, who has read all of Balzac and quotes Flaubert at every dinner, is living proof every day of how education is a raging fraud. All you need to do is watch her with the cats. She's vaguely aware of their decorative potential, and yet she insists on talking to them as if they were people, which she would never do with a lamp or an Etruscan statue. It would seem that children believe for a fairly long time that anything that moves has a soul and is endowed with intention. My mother is no longer a child but she apparently has not managed to conceive that Constitution and Parliament possess no more understanding than the vacuum cleaner. — Muriel Barbery

Listen to me, Dad. When Dylan's first cornea went bad, I grieved for the perfect child he should have been. I told myself that the diagnosis was wrong. I bargained with God - you know, make his eyes right and I'll do anything. When that didn't work I was absolutely furious that my child had to face this. In the end I had no choice. I had to accept it, because that was the only way I could help Dylan." She straightened. "Grieving is a process. Anger is part of it." She paused. "Right now, you're angry that Mom left you alone. But you're taking it out on Jill and me, and we both need you. You can drink all you want - — Barbara Delinsky

For tea she went down to see Misses Spink and Forcible. She had three digestive biscuits, a glass of limeade, and a cup of weak tea. The limeade was very interesting. It didn't taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical. Coraline liked it enormously. She wished they had it at home.
"How are your dear mother and father?" asked Miss Spink.
"Missing," said Coraline. "I haven't seen either of them since yesterday. I'm on my own. I think I've probably become a single child family. — Neil Gaiman

In some aspects losing a child is like a wall, but instead of getting over it, you must carry the wall with you, wherever you go, for as long as you live.
The wall is immovable.
You can't go anywhere until you learn to move the wall.
You are just stuck in the same place, forever.
You can tug and tug all you want, there are days that the wall will not move.
And there are days that it moves ever so slightly.
Over time I have realized that in order to move forward, knowing that I must bring this wall with me, that the best way to do so is to metaphorically flood the soil near the wall with water, and have the wall float with me, instead of me having to carry it.
Every act of love and kindness turns to water.
Water and love can penetrate and move anything.
It just takes time.
I need to turn my wall into a raft. — JohnA Passaro

I'm definitely not trying to be, or am, a poster child for anything so structured. But I do have my own personal faith most definitely. — Katy Perry

I want to protect ye, Sassenach-spread myself over ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi' my body." ... "I would do anything for ye ... and yet ... there's nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go ... not even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them ... aye, I'm afraid, Sassenach. — Diana Gabaldon

I will do anything for Guillermo del Toro, if he asked me. I would give him my first-born child. — Robert Kazinsky

The situation got worse when they came back to her apartment after and someone put on music. An advert interrupted during a moment when I was the person nearest the laptop, and so somebody said to me - quite threateningly, I felt - Put something else on. Obviously I forgot every song I have ever heard in my entire life. In one swift tug, like the tablecloth trick where everything is supposed to remain on the table gone wrong, every name of every artist disappeared too. The only keywords I could think of were the ones on a toy keyboard-and-tape-recorder combo I'd been given as a child, and I hadn't known their meaning even then. Bossa nova, for example.

I said I couldn't think of anything, any music, except silence, and retreated to the corner of the room, pretending to busy myself by scouring the bookcase there, which held little gatherings of figurines as well as Mizuko's many books. — Olivia Sudjic

I guess, for me, I've always thought that there was humor everywhere. And as a kid, I just, you know, I grew up an only child, and I - sort of nothing made me happier than to make my parents laugh. I remember I had costumes and things laying around the house that I was, you know, anything that I could do to make my parents laugh. — Justin Timberlake

Let us end on a very simple note: Let us listen to simple words; our Lord speak simply: "Trust Me, My child," He says. "Trust Me with a humbler heart and a fuller abandon to My will than ever thou didst before. Trust Me to pour My love through thee, as minute succeeds minute. And if thou shouldst be conscious of anything hindering that flow, do not hurt My love by going away from Me in discouragement, for nothing can hurt so much as that. Draw all the closer to Me; come, flee unto Me to hide thee, even from thyself. Tell Me about the trouble. Trust Me to turn My hand upon thee and thoroughly to remove the boulder that has choked they river-bed, and take away all the sand that has silted up the channel. I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. I will perfect that which concerneth thee. Fear thou not, O child of My love; fear not. — Amy Carmichael

But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I? ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event. — Thomas Gordon

Allow me to presume upon this new friendship of ours by telling you that denying your fiance your company in order to gain whatever it is you want, is not only foolish but risky. It was obvious to me that his grace has a great affection for you, and I truly think he would give you anything you want if you simply gave him that lovely smile of yours and asked him for it. Deceit and deviousness do you no credit, my child, and what's more, they will get you absolutely nowhere with the duke. He has known females far more skilled in deception and trickery than you, and all those ladies ever got from him was the opportunity to amuse him for a very brief time. While you, by being direct and forthright as I sense that you are, have gained the very thing those other females most desired. You have gained the offer of his grace's hand in marriage.
-Dr. Whitticomb — Judith McNaught

Death doesn't happen instantly. For a little while, you hover around your body, confused. What you want more than anything is to go home, to be safe, to know you're okay. But my life was over. — Caroline Flohr

Okay, okay. So. First things first. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Second thing: I should probably say "thank you" for saving my life. Say it and then follow it up with something funny like ... okay. Spinach joke. Spinach joke. Shit. Um ... Oh, I know! What do anal sex and spinach have in common? If you're forced to have either as a child, you won't want it as an adult. Holy fucking Christ. What the fuck is wrong with me? There is no way I can make a spinach/molesting joke! I am a monster. Think of something else. Think of anything else! — T.J. Klune

I felt a familiar tingle rush over and through my body, a slight electrical buzz that made the hair stand up on my nape and arms. I didn't hear or see anything, but suddenly my mind was filled with a thought that seemed to have come from somewhere both far beyond me and deep within me. I knew - I knew - that there was some infinite power whose relationship with me was being echoed by my relationship with Adam. It seemed to be telling me, without words but with perfect clarity, that my natural state was not hunger but fulfillment. More than that: this power yearned, longed, ached to nourish me, as intensely as I needed to feed my child. The only obstacle, for both Adam and me, was an impaired ability to receive. — Martha N. Beck

In childhood, it's our parents who give us our standards for experience: "Here's an inch," they say. "And this is a foot." And a child says, "Thanks! I can make my own yardstick now." In my family, there wasn't any kind of calibration demonstration. In the chaos, I struggled to figure out anything at all. — Heather Sellers

It hurts more than anything in the world because even though it might not be the case, it feels like you've chosen your child over me.
'I haven't there is no choice. She's part of me. You're part of me too. It's like ... I don't know ... asking me to pick between my heart and my lungs.'
'I know, but the thing is, you are my heart and my lungs. You're everything to me. And what hurts is that I know i used to be everything to you. — Mike Gayle

I go to the window, I spot a fly under the curtain, I corner it in a muslin trap and move a murderous forefinger toward it. This moment is not in the program, it's something apart, timeless, incomparable, motionless, nothing will come of it this evening or later ... Mankind is asleep ... Alone and without a future in a stagnant moment, a child is asking murder for strong sensations. Since I'm refused a man's destiny, I'll be the destiny of a fly. I don't rush matters, I'm letting it have time enough to become aware of the giant bending over it. I move my finger forward, the fly bursts, I'm foiled! Good God, I shouldn't have killed it! It was the only being in all creation that feared me; I no longer mean anything to anyone. I, the insecticide, take the victim's place and become an insect myself. I'm a fly, I've always been one. This time I've touched bottom. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It sounds corny, but I've promised my inner child that never again will I ever abandon myself for anything or anyone else again. — Wynonna Judd

he said, "Don't you give him too much love?" "You can never give a child too much love," I said. "You can only give them too little love. Love doesn't make a child weaker, it makes a child stronger." That was an odd one for my dad to hear. If I ever heard someone telling Evan not to cry, not to be a baby, anything like that, I made a point of telling Evan the truth that I had discovered: people who hide their emotions are weak. You find strength and peace by being open. — Paul Stanley

I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

From the first I hated, and whenever possible evaded, orderly instruction in regard to the world around me...Not that I lacked the child's faculty of wonder. In a sense, I had it to excess. For what astonished, and still astonishes, me more than anything else was the existence, anywhere, of anything at all. But since things there were, I preferred to become one with them, in the child's way of direct apprehension which no subsequent 'knowledge' can either rival or destroy, rather than to stand back and be told, in relation to any of the objects of my self-losing adoration, this and that. — Dorothy M. Richardson

I won but I wasn't like Pat. Because - and why this should be I'll never know - I never did a thing that wasn't somehow touched with selfish, furtive hunger, with a private, annihilating need for recognition. Because I'm like a child in a fairy tale cursed from birth, and there has never been anything I can put my hand to without tainting it, no triumph so great or solemn that it doesn't turn spoiled and ridiculous. Because, sooner or later, the darkness always gets in. — Austin Grossman

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

You don't know for sure if I'm pregnant."
"Do not play games, Raven. Sometimes your rebellious ways grow tedious. I know you are with child. You cannot hide such a thing from me. Mikhail knows it to be true, and he knows he cannot allow your dangerous involvement in this mission to continue with you in such a condition."
Raven flung out her ebony hair. "No one allows me to do anything. I decide. I was born and raised human, Gregori," she pointed out. "I can only be myself. Byron is my friend, and he is in desperate trouble. I intend to help him."
"If your lifemate is so enthralled with you that he would allow you such foolishness," Gregori replied softly, menacingly, "then I can do no other than protect you myself."
"Don't you talk about Mikhail like that!" Raven was furious.
You really know how to stir up the hornets' nest with the women, do you not? Mikhail demanded, even though he understood Gregori completely and felt him justified. — Christine Feehan

It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much."

Tatsu. — Barry Eisler

Thank You, Lord, that I am a child of Yours, set apart for Your glory, and that You hear my prayers. When I pray, help me to have the peace of knowing You have heard my prayer and will answer in Your way and in Your perfect timing. Show me if there is ever anything in my life that would become a barrier between me and You so that my prayers would go unanswered. — Stormie O'martian

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything. — Harlan Coben

By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world. — Mark Twain

[Andrei Sakharov] won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist? What sort of physician would stay married to a mate that cracked?
"Anything interesting happen at work today, honeybunch?"
"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with chicken pox? — Kurt Vonnegut

For a long time, it was hard for me to get my work done in Chicago. Silk Road gave me opportunities to do shows like 'Golden Child' - shows that nobody else seemed interested in. And they bring an artistic integrity to the work that matches anything you'll find at a bigger theatre. — David Henry Hwang

I have heard people say that the short story was one of the most difficult literary forms, and I've always tried to decide why people feel this way about what seems to me to be one of the most natural and fundamental ways of human expression. After all, you begin to hear and tell stories when you're a child, and there doesn't seem to be anything very complicated about it. I suspect that most of you have been telling stories all your lives, and yet here you sit - come to find out how to do it.
Then last week, after I had written down some of these serene thoughts to use here today, my calm was shattered when I was sent seven of your manuscripts to read.
After this experience, I found myself ready to admit, if not that the short story is one of the most difficult literary forms, at least that it is more difficult for some than for others. — Flannery O'Connor

You really think broken children care about justice?" "Wouldn't you?" "Never really did, no. Justice is a faulty thing at the best of times, and it doesn't actually fix anything." "Would you say that if you'd gotten justice as a child?" That not-quite-smile, bitter and gone too fast. "And what would I have needed justice for?" "My life's work, and you think I won't recognize a broken child when she sits in front of me? — Dot Hutchison

My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally, she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was pain no words can render. — Charlotte Bronte

Even they would think you a monster were you to
orchestrate a divorce right after my confinement."
"How long do you recommend I wait, then?"
"A long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted:
The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child."
"So you will contest the divorce?"
"To my last penny. And then I'll borrow from Fitz and Millie."
"So we'll be married 'til the end of time?"
"The sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off."
His ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. "Now if you'll excuse me, I must have enough rest."
He gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he'd already accepted it from the moment he'd said "I do"? — Sherry Thomas

You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book
if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction. This is something that every child, smitten by books, understands immediately, though it's not at all a childish idea about the importance of reading. — Philip Roth

If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there'd be no democracy, no public schools, women's rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I was afraid to challenge my religious beliefs because that was the basis of creation - mine anyway. I was afraid to question the Bible or anything in it, and when I did, that's when I became involved with PFLAG and realized that my son was a perfectly normal human being and there was nothing for God to heal because Bobby was perfect just the way he was. — Mary Griffith

Why target two and a half million innocent newborns and children?" Barbara Loe Fisher asks of the hep B vaccine. The implication behind the word innocent is that only those who are not innocent need protection from disease. All of us who grew up during the AIDS epidemic were exposed to the idea that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, promiscuity, and addiction. But if disease is a punishment for anything, it is only a punishment for being alive. When I was a child, I asked my father what causes cancer and he paused for a long moment before saying, "Life. Life causes cancer." I took this as an artful dodge until I read Siddhartha Mukherjee's history of cancer, in which he argues not only that life causes cancer but that cancer is us. "Down to their innate molecular core," Mukherjee writes, "cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves." And this, he notes, "is not a metaphor. — Eula Biss

What you need on hand: Olive Oil Garlic Chamomile Lavender Directions: Begin with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Add 1 drop of garlic oil from a freshly crushed garlic clove. (You can do this by crushing the clove and allowing a drop to roll off into the oil.) Add 2 drops of chamomile and 2 drops of lavender to the oil. Stir oils to mix. Fill an eyedropper with mixture. Add 2 drops of oil mixture into the ear. Try to keep the aching ear upright for a couple of minutes. I like to add this oil at night before bed so that I fall asleep with my ear upright for a while. This is great for kids as it usually gives immediate relief. Note: If you have a child like I do that refuses to let me put anything in his ear, I warm the oil in my hand and add it to his ear at night after he falls asleep. He wakes up happy forgetting he ever had an ear ache. — Laurel Brushett

Either the gods have power or they don't. If they don't,
why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else
instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to
feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they
can surely do that for us. - But those are things the gods left up to me.
Then isn't it better to do what's up to you - like a free man
- than to be passively controlled by what isn't, like a slave
or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don't care
about what's up to us?
Start praying like this and you'll see.
Not "some way to sleep with her" - but a way to stop
wanting to.
Not "some way to get rid of him" - but a way to stop
trying.
Not "some way to save my child" - but a way to lose your
fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens. — Marcus Aurelius

These people, they were different to anyone I'd met. They'd offered their friendship, their trust, without a second thought. I'd always been wary about new people in my life. That same old barrier I put up to protect myself. I didn't let anyone close enough to be able to hurt me. My father had left, as though I was as insubstantial as air. As a child, I'd struggled to come to terms with it. He'd been there every single day, and then he wasn't. So what were we to him? A stopgap until something he determined as better came along? With the Aunt Margot feud, and subsequent alienation of the family, it felt as though people abandoned us like we were yesterday's newspaper. Could I fall into friendships with these girls, and then leave? Maybe it was time for me to stop worrying about anything other than living in the moment. I was missing out on so much, standing on the edge of life, waiting for something that might never happen. — Rebecca Raisin

I got kicked out of my first home for poking a wire hanger into an electrical outlet. My foster mom caught me, shrieked, and called the DCFS to come cart me away, because I was clearly suicidal and no one had told her that I was a child with 'special needs.'"
"Were you? Suicidal?"
"I was five."
"Still."
"No, I wasn't trying to off myself. I was curious. Little kids spend half their waking hours being warned not to do things. Don't run with scissors. Don't lick a flagpole in winter. Don't stick anything into electrical outlets. Those three little holes looked so mysterious. I had to know if they were as dangerous as everyone said."
"What happened?" A smile curled the corner of Conn's mouth, indicating he'd already guessed the answer - which wasn't exactly hard, given that I was standing right there in front of him, and not buried in an early grave with the tombstone Here Lies Darcy Jones, electrocuted orphan. — Marie Rutkoski

If she'd said she loved me and still did all those cruel and careless things, would my child mind have decided to accept that as the definition of love?
Probably.
Would I have ended up believing that love was manipulative and hurtful and full of pain, gotten use to being shoved aside, sworn at and disregarded, picked up and hugged, and then slapped around for getting in the way, starved and smiled at, neglected and cursed, told I was no good and would never amount to anything, then hefted high and proudly shown off down at the Walmart, introduced as a little pisser and a big mistake in the same breath?
Yes, I would have, because if she said she loved me and then acted that way I would have thought that was how you loved someone, and how someone should love you back. — Laura Wiess

Before you arrived here in this world, I had nothing to live for. I hunted. I existed. I did not look forward to anything. But now you are here, and you might be carrying my child even now." His jaw flexes. "I know you are more than capable. The problem is not with you. It is with me. This world is dangerous, and I think of you, alone, out in the wild, and it is more than I can bear. — Ruby Dixon

6A day will come when the wolf will live peacefully beside the wobbly-kneed lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; The calf and yearling, newborn and slow, will rest secure with the lion; and a little child will tend them all. 7Bears will graze with the cows they used to attack; even their young will rest together, and the lion will eat hay, like gentle oxen. 8-9Neither will a baby who plays next to a cobra's hole nor a toddler who sticks his hand into a nest of vipers suffer harm. All my holy mountain will be free of anything hurtful or destructive, for as the waters fill the sea, The entire earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Eternal. — Anonymous

When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child. — H.L. Mencken

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I'm a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child's life, and in a child's level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. — Dan Pearce

Ty grabbed my phone and threatened to tell Otter that I liked being spanked during sex.
This proceeded to lead up on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. H said he might have heard it mentioned while watching MSNBC. I told him he was grounded from watching the news channels for a week. That's where this whole sidebar should have ended, but then I was forced to explain S & M and bondage to my little brother, who was persistent on the topic, and who kept staring at me with mounting horror when I finally /did/ explain, and I realized I had maybe gone too far, and we had to spend the next five minutes swearing to God that I had never nor would I ever attempt to do anything like that. He might now be the only nine-year-old who has heard the terms "cock ring" and "fisting". My parenting skills are unparalleled. — T.J. Klune

If any one thinks I am unfaithful to human fact, and overcharge the description of this child, I on my side doubt the extent of the experience of that man or woman. I admit the child a rarity, but a rarity in the right direction, and therefore a being with whom humanity has the greater need to be made acquainted. I admit that the best things are the commonest, but the highest types and the best combinations of them are the rarest. There is more love in the world than anything else, for instance; but the best love and the individual in whom love is supreme are the rarest of all things. — George MacDonald

Too afraid to touch anything, I found sitting in the custom made indow cubby the safest place for me to be as I played games with raindrops. Rainy days made the time pass more quickly as I pretended I was the tiniest raindrop on its descent down the glass. My goal would be to not make it to the bottom. I counted on morphing with the other, bigger raindrops and kept count of the times I won and the times I lost. The heaviness of the storm would dictate my luck. The heavier the storm, the more likely gravity would ruin my chances at survival. When I started losing more than I was winning, I rested my forehead on the cold hard glass and asked them if disintegrating on impact was really all that bad. It was time for a new distraction. — Cherry Tigris