Malorie Blackman Quotes

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

When you're a kid, right, and you're surrounded by all these other kids, and let's say they don't have the same interests or the same goals or the same world view as you... It's difficult because a child doesn't know that there's another way. A child doesn't know that there's another place outside of the systems and hierarchies in school.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

The most formative time of our lives are the years between birth and age 21, when we explore who we are and learn from those who surround us.

Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.

I think my real influences are out of my control, which are the things that entered my brain when I was a kid growing up.

As you get older, you realise that your identity becomes more important - the environment in which you have grown is actually part of who you are just as much as your family or your school.

When you're little, every experience writes on the canvas of who you are.

When you're a child, and you're growing up, and you're mimicking a certain character, or you're trying to live and breathe a certain character on set for eight years that are also your formative years, you oftentimes take a lot of who you're playing into your real life and kind of become that thing.

The search for a personal identity is the life task of a teenager.

The way in which each human infant is transformed into the finished adult, into the complicated individual version of his city and his century is one of the most fascinating studies open to the curious minded.

My own child doesn't even know that Stephanie is my name.

Everything in adulthood can be traced back to childhood.

How children attempt to deal with everyday comedies and tragedies, and mortality, is universal and ultimately such a large part of what it means to be human.

Playing four years of college, you learn a lot; you learn more about yourself than anything.

So much changes in a year when you're a teenager.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

I remember in junior high school, which is what we called it, suddenly I was looking at myself, almost through other people's eyes, and thought: how does the world see me? So that was one of the things I was really interested in, when I was writing Goodbye Stranger.

There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

When we're growing up and being teenagers, oftentimes you try so hard to define yourself. You try to create an image of yourself because you don't really know who you are yet. And that can be kind of limiting because you forget that there are actually so many different sides of identity. And it's important to recognize that everyone is completely different.

She announced her age right away, for children consider their ages every bit as important as their names.

There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

When we get civilised, I believe children will go by number until they get old enough to choose their own names.

I do agree to a certain extent that it is unfortunate that I have to be a little more aware of being a kid and growing up and figuring out who I am, but at the same time, it's part of what I love.