Book Third Child Quotes & Sayings

Question four: What book would you give to every child?
Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads.
That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. — Derrick Jensen

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version:
Where's my daddy?
Is that my daddy?
He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"
He is Foul Ol' Ron!
No, that's not my daddy!
It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. — Terry Pratchett

On Christmas morning when I was a child, my mother would leave a book wrapped at the foot of the bed, which was a hint that Santa had come. It was also her way of keeping us in bed a little longer before we went downstairs. So I've always associated books with happiness and gifts. And they are. I can't get enough of them. — David McCullough

If the White House could do more to tell parents that getting children reading is their business too, we'd see a big difference. Hollywood and the NBA or NFL could step in, too. In England they have an event called Book Day, where every child receives a pound to use at any bookstore. — James Patterson

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. — J. Don Cook

Ever since I was a little child, I refused to see movies of books that I loved. Because you already know what Heidi looks like and she doesn't look like Shirley Temple. — Fran Lebowitz

It's scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step. One small step and then another. That's what it takes to raise a child, to get a degree, to write a book, to do whatever it is your heart desires. — Regina Brett

A child's imagination can be found in the heart of a good book. — K. Lamb

The umlaut isn't on my birth certificate. I had this book as a child called Chloe and Maude, and there was an umlaut on the e, and I said, I want that! It's a little flair. Just to confuse people even more. — Chloe Sevigny

When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents! — Dick Bruna

You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful. — Noam Chomsky

A child her wayward pencil drew
On margins of her book;
Garlands of flower, dancing elves,
Bud, butterfly, and brook,
Lessons undone, and plum forgot,
Seeking with hand and heart
The teacher whom she learned to love
Before she knew t'was Art. — Louisa May Alcott

As I view it, in every family a record should be kept ... that record should be the first stone, if you choose, in the family altar. It should be a book known and used in the family circle; and when the child reaches maturity and goes out to make another household, one of the first things that the young couple should take along should be the records of their families, to be extended by them as life goes on ... each one of us carries, individually, the responsibility of record keeping, and we should assume it. — John Andreas Widtsoe

A good friend of mine once said, I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child. — Marion Dane Bauer

But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep. — Ramona Koval

I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book. — Lydia M. Child

What did the others give to each other?
Nothingness.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. Everyone must leave something behind
when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a
wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand
touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when
people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The
difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the
touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the
gardener will be there a lifetime. — Ray Bradbury

You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way. — Meg Medina

One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world. — Malala Yousafzai

Somewhere in this process, I begin reading and showing my book to my audience. When I say my audience, I mean a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself as a young person, the students in my wife's classroom of first- through third-graders, and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly in the Bronx, New York. — Chris Raschka

TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn ... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. — Pete Hautman

I qualify it as pathetic. Pathetic
because despite the insatiable fire of my venereal appetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child. — Vladimir Nabokov

Peter Rabbit's not a rabbit. Peter Rabbit is a proxy for the child who reads the book, and they imagine themselves in the rabbit's position. — Chris Van Allsburg

Nothing ensures the success of the child more in the society than being read to from infancy to young adulthood. Reading books to and with children is the single most important thing a parent, grandparent, or significant adult can do. — Anita Silvey

Luther's early position proclaimed that everyone, including "the humble miller's maid, nay, a child of nine," could interpret the Bible. However, as Christianity began to fracture, he radically altered his position. He called the Bible the "heresy book." In 1525 he wrote: "There are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow will have nothing to do with baptism; another denies the sacraments; a third believes that there is another world between this and the Last Day. Some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some say that. There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Spirit and he himself is a prophet."104 — James M. Seghers

I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends. — Claire Tomalin

The computer on the desk of the student in school knows no history. It is not like a book, worn at the edges by human hands. No little child has written a note in it, long ago. It will not be passed down to the children of the children who use it. Its "meaning" is that there is no enduring meaning. — Anthony M. Esolen

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls ... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory. — Katharine Sergeant Angell White

A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing. — Benjamin Spock

For me, marriage should be about partnership. How can you love someone you have to take care of like a child all the time? A wife is supposed to be a partner, and yes partners help each other when they need it, but they are supposed to be together because they want to in my book, not because one needs the other. — Lynsay Sands

Adapting your own book is like performing open-heart surgery on your own child. — Jonathan Tropper

If I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony, painted the most beautiful painting or carved the most exquisite figure I could not have felt the more exalted creator than I did when they placed my child in my arms. — Dorothy Day

So she retreated into herself, rebuilt the damaged pathways of her mind, explored long-unvisited memories, wandered among the trillions of human lives that were open to her observation, read over the libraries of every book known to exist in every language human beings had ever spoken. She created out of all this a self that was not utterly linked to Ender Wiggin, though she was still devoted to him, still loved him above any other living soul. Jane made herself into someone who could bear to be cut off from her lover, husband, father, child, brother, friend. — Orson Scott Card

The three things that kept me sane as a child were bikes, books, and soccer — Mal Peet

I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn't allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren't noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor's steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one's sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. — Wendy Welch

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber