Martha Grimes Quotes

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

The things about my childhood that I really loved the most, writing about those things was hard because I knew they would never happen again.

Some of the most powerful memories are those when you are very, very young. Adult life is seen through the reflection of complex, rational thought.

A handsome period of my childhood was spent at our house in Tollygunge.

There was a place in childhood that I remember well, And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?

People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.

If there is any realm where distinction is especially difficult, it is the realm of childhood memories, the realm of beloved images harbored in memory since childhood. These memories which live by the image and in virtue of the image become, at certain times of our lives and particularly during the quiet age, the origin and matter of a complex reverie: the memory dreams, and reverie remembers.

(...) Since I was a kid." "Which you refer to as 'back when you were happy.'" "Right.

Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.

Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.

When I was little the sky was closer.

It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him.

What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be.

You can remember times when you were a kid, when life looked too doggoned deliciously beautiful to be left alone. So you could feel like that again if you worked at it.

I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.

When a band means a lot to you, you build the fantasy more than the reality. Always.

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.

Childhood candor... shall I ever find you again?