“Boys will be boys, Jacques. They have high spirits. Oh, once in a while they get carried away but it’s good to see all that energy and zeal and enthusiasm.”

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“A precision of language was one of the most important tasks of small children.”

Lois Lowry, The Giver

“He found that people had a fear of being embarrassed or humiliated, or being singled out for special attention.”

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Nobody wanted trouble, nobody wanted to make trouble, nobody wanted a show down. The knowledge was a revelation. It opened doors. You could take a kid’s lunch money and nothing usually happened because most kids wanted piece at any price.”

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Even bad people, even thieves and robbers have children and love them.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“How easily, in the absence of children, the whole experience of life becomes abstracted, a pattern of words and daydreams.”

Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord

“It ruins a man’s concentration to have a crèche hanging over his head.”

John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

“Even children have a sense of feminine beauty, or at least they understand instinctively whether a woman is pure or not.”

Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi – Book One: The Way of the Samurai

“Kids are a pain in the ass.”

Harold Robbins, The Piranhas

“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

“… children individually were great, only became unbearable en masse.”

Rosemary Hall, Falling for Greece

“Like children are all people.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Kids always have a soft spot for silly limericks.”

Daen-aran Saengtong, Venom

“… children always think anything old and strange is funny.”

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

“In childish times

it’s easier;

a child believes

just what it’s told.

But children grow

and soon begin

to see too much

that doesn’t match

the simple tales,

and not enough

of what’s behind

their parents’ words.”

Terry Anderson, Den of Lions – Memoirs of Seven Years