Edin Dzeko Quotes

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.

I had to deal with death at a really young age.

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 began to speak well at a very advanced age - 15, 16, 17 years old. It was psychological: the trauma of war, my family and growing up on my own. I was more or less a street kid.

I'm someone who lived in a war for five years. I received bombs on my head every day of my childhood. Did that stop me from living? Did that stop me from laughing?

What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.

Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

When you have a tough childhood, you either cry or make a joke.

Losing one's mother to a car crash at age four isn't a readily accessible idea of good luck, but I've come to accept it as the condition that was required for my luck to fall into place.

I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don't carry around much baggage.

I had a very difficult childhood. I was surrounded by people who had both parents, which made me feel different. Having a bit of a rougher existence early on, it made me appreciate the work ethic that my grandparents instilled in me.

My mom died when I was 16. I had a rough childhood, you know what I mean, but it made me strong.

My parents had some problems of their own that put me in a position of having to deal with very grown-up stuff at a very young age. I needed some help with that, therapy-wise.

When you see a 14-year-old boy who has never known what peace looks like for a day in his life, there's part of you as a human being that feels some degree, you can say, compassion for the fact that these boys have known war, famine, violence and death from the day they were born.

Growing up, we didn't have anything. My mum wasn't well, so I was in three care homes then foster homes before me and my little brother went back to her. I was passed from pillar to post.

I'm blessed with a great memory. To be honest, a lot of times, being on my own at such a young age, my memories were all I had. I didn't have many pictures.

I don't know if it's that my own childhood felt brief, or I grew up too fast, or I was pushing myself too much at a young age, but I do feel like I am clinging to a certain childlike quality in myself, as a result of a childhood that was sometimes complicated.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.

I grew up homeless, you know, lived in and out of U-Haul trucks and, you know, apartment houses, friends.

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

And having suffered for part of the war when I was a child. I was too young to really understand what was going on but one of my favorite pieces of animation now is that Goodbye Blue Sky in The Wall because that deals directly with that period in time.

Jesus Christ - He means the world to me. So many different situations I've been through, through my childhood and now my adulthood; I lost my brother at a young age. He got hit by a car right in front of me. I had to be strong for my mom.

Watching Jaws just scared the living daylights out of me when I was young. I know a lot of people my age who are still petrified of sharks because of that film.