Thornton Wilder Quotes

I had a very rough and tumultuous childhood.

I like the idea of Wild Infancy, of people who have a deprived background, of starting out wild.

Sometimes I think we're exposed to things we shouldn't be exposed to too early. I think that sets the tone to a person's whole life. Trauma.

I lived in Complexo do Alemao until I was 12, dealt with domestic violence in my childhood and faced difficulties in life.

It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.

I probably wouldn't be a songwriter if I didn't grow up the way I did. It was difficult and it was at times very scary to grow up in a household so unsettled and at times very violent. But, it also, I guess it earned me a sort of wisdom at a young age that's served me well.

I do tend to divide my childhood into darkness and light, and the first seven years were certainly the darkness.

Childhood bullying was a big part of my life.

I didn't have a good childhood growing up.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

I definitely didn't have a happy childhood.

My childhood was so traumatic.

If a kid is born into a tough situation with no means of dealing with it, you end up with kids who are mentally ill and have no way of reaching out.

If I remember the suffering of my childhood and youth, it could make me sad. But if one thinks of the benefits, it is precisely because of these sufferings since I was small that I have become a man. I have become a person who thinks, who has feelings, because I have suffered.

Is there such a thing as a normal childhood?

I had a bad background just growing up as a child.

Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.

Oftentimes, experiencing tragedy very young can strangely give you a kind of equilibrium.

Well, we can skip childhood because I didn't have any. Not one goddam moment on the Good Ship Lollipop.

(An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours.

I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did.

My childhood was absolutely the worst place I've ever been," "It was terrible.

I grew up in Louisiana, and I grew up with a dysfunctional family with some very serious abuse from my stepfather, who could be a very beautiful person on one hand and be terrible on the other, so it leaves your soul troubled as a child.

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.