Libba Bray Quotes

People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.

What a childhood I had. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist. The kid didn't help me at all.

I was raped when I was very young. I told my brother the name of the person who had done it. Within a few days the man was killed. In my child's mind--seven and a half years old--I thought my voice had killed him. So I stopped talking for five years.

Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.

As many conventionally unhappy parents did in the 1950s, my parents stayed together for the sake of the children—they divorced after my youngest brother left home for college. I only wish they had known that modeling their dysfunctional relationship was far more damaging to their children than their separation would have been.

You should really try to live your childhood when you’re a child, because if you do it when you’re 26, it can be dangerous.

I grew up like a boy, also because most of the children who came to our house were boys.

I remember being told by my parents when I was 4 that I couldn't go to an amusement park advertised on TV because colored kids weren't allowed there. That was a bit of a shock and really stayed with me over the years. That was how I first learned about racial segregation. Fortunately, I took it as a challenge, early on, and it motivated me. You never know how a child might respond to discrimination. It goes both ways. Some kids become embittered.

The bottomless bitter misery of childhood: how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.

Semi-facetiously, when people ask me why I write these kinds of stories, I simply say that I was warped as a child. And, there is some truth to that.

I think that comedy is a good defense for a child. Because you know childhood is a nightmare as it is. And so why not use comedy and being funny as a defense to get through your life as opposed to drugs, alcohol and good looks? Because those things are dangerous when your young.

One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt - the child who never had a home of her own, who lives in her grandmother's home and then goes to school and then gets married and lives in her mother-in-law's homes, and then in public housing (like the White House and the State House) - housing becomes for Eleanor Roosevelt the most important issue.

There was a big age difference between me and my brothers - about 10 years - so I was an only child for a long time. I used to hang out a lot on my own. I played a lot of weird games with a lot of imaginary people. I guess it's kind of roleplaying.

The thing with psychoanalysis is I know basically what happened in my childhood. I know where things went wrong and I know what my mother said at one point and what my father said at one point.

So much of what holds us back in life are the long-held resentments stemming from childhood.

Before you judge me , try hard to love me , look within your heart Then ask , - have you seen my childhood ?

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?

When you're a child, grownups always tell you that "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you". They say it as if it's a kind of spell that's going to protect you. I've never seen the logic of it. Cuts and bruises quickly disappear. You forget all about them. The psychological wounds inflicted by bullies with words go much deeper.

All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

Sorrow makes us all children again.

People are more willing to talk about child abuse. When this whole McMartin thing went down, I was at a dinner party with about eight people, all from different backgrounds and from all over the world. And every single person at that table had had some weird experience as a child. I think everyone has - whether it was with a babysitter, or playing doctor, but usually when some older person tries to come in contact with you. It's amazing how much we block out.

I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them

Everyones childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand.

When you’re young, your world is pretty limited. My parents, my family, my church dominated my world. And because Birmingham was so segregated, I didn’t really have to encounter the slings and arrows of racism on a daily basis. Obviously, from time to time I did, like when my parents took me to see Santa Claus and he wasn’t letting black children sit on his knee. But my parents tried to insulate me as much as they could.

Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern.