Children Kids Story Quotes & Sayings

I have an Alka-Seltzer bat. You know-plop, plop, fizz, fizz, when the pitcher sees me walking up there he says, 'Oh, what a relief it is'. — Andy Van Slyke

Bob and Maria's kids, now grown and in high school and college, each have a quiet dignity and confidence. They also have an informal charm. [...] It is obvious they'd played the roles in the story their family was living, the roles of foreign dignitaries, traveling with their parents on the important assignment of asking world leaders what they hope in. Their STORY had given them their CHARACTER.

I only say this about the children because I used to believe charming people were charming because they were charming, or confident people were confident because they were confident. But all of this is, of course, circular. The truth is, we are all living out the character of the roles we have played in our stories. — Donald Miller

I usually make up stories for my kids.I like to tell them stories and make up any kind of crazy to involve them in characters. The kind of fairytales I don't like are the ones with happy endings, where there's just good and evil and things are perfect. I think when there's a good story for children it has a moral tale, so that's what I try to teach my kids. — Angelina Jolie

When the subject of kids first came up years ago, I'd joked that the only thing I could imagine worse than me as a mother was Clay as a father. I couldn't have been more wrong. Clay was an amazing parents. The guy who couldn't spare a few minutes to hear a mutt's side of the story could listen to his kids talk all day. The guy who couldn't sit still through a brief council meeting could spend hours building Lego castles with his kids. The guy who solved problems with his fists never even raised his voice to his children. And if sometimes Clay was a little too indulgent, a little too slow to discipline, preferring to leave that to me, I was okay with it. He supported and enforced my decisions and we presented a unified front to our children, and that was all that mattered. — Kelley Armstrong

Still. Four words.
And I didn't realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:
Dear Neil,
If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children's area, what would it be?
Thanks!
Lynn
I pondered a bit. I'd said a lot about books and kids' reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote:
I'm not sure I'd put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I'd just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I'd put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it's working, and that pages will be turned:
... and then what happened? — Neil Gaiman

Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock. — Mike Huckabee

Caregivers, like all of us, inevitably reflect their culture's attitude toward children and life. The story goes that when Pearl Buck was a child in China, someone asked how she compared her mother to her Chinese amah. Buck replied, "If I want to have a story read, I go to my mother. But if I fall down and need to be comforted, I go to my amah." Her mother's culture valued teaching and learning, while her amah's placed a greater value on nurture. Even as a child, Buck instinctively knew the difference. — David C. Pollock

I'd call it love if love didn't take so many years but lust too is a jewel. — Adrienne Rich

They were really children that morning. By nightfall none of them were.

First line from Patrick's short story - The Quarry-gang Kids. — Patrick McCusker

The words scare her. She's scared of love. — Katie McGarry

Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying. — Kate Klise

Only Granny Weatherwax really knew Granny Weatherwax. — Terry Pratchett

I think I do pretty well with child characters. It's hard to write kids that are realistic, not annoying, and bring something to the story. — Elizabeth Hoyt

People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think. — C. JoyBell C.

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. The writer doubles and trebles the power of writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. — Victor Hugo

Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies. — Brian J. White

When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know
is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why childrens books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child the truth of our history and existence, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale. — Suzy Kassem

Book is the best friend, have no demand, no complain — Avi Salmon

When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things. — Laura Ruby

He who has lost his money-belt will go where you wish. — Horace

A lot of (children's literature) beginners get bogged down by morals. A moral should never be driving the story. And a moral should never be confused with a plot. You can't preach to kids, and you can't talk down to them, either. It's amazing how they sense condescension. — Patty Smith

I was just four when a hired teenage field hand attempted to molest me. Miraculously, I got away, and I told my dad. My father made three important choices that day: He listened to me, he believed me, and he took action. I was one of the fortunate ones
I had a childhood. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

My ex-student, Idit Harel, who wrote a book, "Children Designs," has a documented story of a kid who was very shy, isolated and didn't talk much to other kids. She was a little overweight, and the other kids looked down on her for that reason.But then she made a discovery about how to do something on the computer. The discovery was picked up by other kids, and within a few weeks there was a total transformation. This kid was now in demand. And that changed her feeling about herself. — Seymour Papert

Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion's den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can't get free of them and that's what kids like in school. They read about rocket ships and encounters in space, tales of dinosaurs. All my life I've been running through the fields and picking up bright objects. I turn one over and say, Yeah, there's a story. And that's what kids like. Today, my stories are in a thousand anthologies. And I'm in good company. The other writers are quite often dead people who wrote in metaphors: Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne. All these people wrote for children. They may have pretended not to, but they did. — Ray Bradbury

The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight. — Thomas Jefferson

When we've decided to tell the truth in a story, we should tell good, strong versions of it, proper versions that kids can do something with. — Celine Kiernan

More fantastic still were his stories about life in the Welsh children's home. It was an enchanted place, he said, designed to keep kids safe from the monsters, on an island where the sun shined every day and nobody ever got sick or died. Everyone lived together in a big house that was protected by a wise old bird - or so the story went. As I got older, though, I began to have doubts. — Ransom Riggs

I get my ideas for books from my own kids and sometimes from other children. Often when I am telling stories I will say: I am going to make up a new story. — Robert Munsch

Entire families are attending 'Son of God' together and sharing it with their own kids. Parents are using the film as a conversation starter to help bring the story of Jesus to life for their children. — Roma Downey

Last year I picked up the New York Times and there was a story about a kid from Dartmouth who was bragging that he never left his room, and made dates and ordered pizza with his computer. The piece de resistance of this story was that he had two roommates, and he was proud of the fact that he only talked to them by computer. — Studs Terkel

Career success is using your daily work, schoolwork, work in the world, work at home, as a way of advancing your mental state. — Frederick Lenz

I enjoy writing for both kids and adults, though I think I'm better at children's stories because I was a teacher for so long, and I know that audience well. The process is no different whether I'm writing for children or adults. Really, the elements of making a good story are the same. — Rick Riordan

We want our children to know and believe the one good story. Every other story is a copy or shadow of this one. Some copies of it are quite good and shout the Truth. Others see only the faintest whisper of it, or, in its absence remind us of the Truth. We want our kids to know the one good story so well that when they see Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo, Anne of Green Gables, Arielle, or Sleeping Beauty, they can recognize the strands of Truth and deception in them. Saturating our children in the one good story will enable them to discern Truth and error as it comes to them from the world. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Everybody cursed the Bolsheviks but nobody was prepared to do anything about them. — Orlando Figes

Because the existing education system is oriented towards materialistic goals we need to pay special attention to inner values such as tolerance, forgiveness, love and compassion. — Dalai Lama

We've got it [Percy's Head Boy badge]," Fred whispered to Harry. "We're improving it."
The badge now read Bighead Boy. — J.K. Rowling

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning. — Steve Pemberton

I really love to read bedtime story for my kids before they fall asleep.
Making them so excited and inspired, it's truly my favorite quality time. — Toba Beta

So if we're going to keep all kids safe, we have to make incest and child sexual abuse acceptable topics of conversation. When other people want us to keep quiet because the subject makes them uncomfortable, or when someone questions our memory of events, we have to hold to the truth. Sexual abuse of children is preventable! But we can't wait for someone else to act. We're the ones who have to stop this madness. And it starts with each of us telling our story. — Lauren Book

I live a super-healthy lifestyle not because it's sensible or that I'm contrite, but because I need to keep my focus on the music I'm making. To do that, I need to be wide awake. — Johnny Marr

I don't like your hair black. (Artemis)
And I don't like your head attached to your shoulders. Guess we can't all have what we want, huh? (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon