Sophia Loren Quotes

There is a psychic cost children bear when they grow up in fear.

I go to third grade, and I'm scared to death. I'm just 6 years old, and the kids are so much bigger than me.

I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.

When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape - I remember it all.

When I was 11, I was terrified about the world.

Of course I had friends, but it was very limiting because there was always a chance that at every corner, someone would be laughing at me or waiting to beat me up. I had a very lonely childhood because of that.

There were times I'd be nervous walking home from elementary school, thinking, 'If that red tag from the power company saying our lights are turned off is on the door handle, I don't know what I'll do.'

This deep insecurity has been going on for a while. I mean I picked it up in 2014 sitting in focus groups of women who were feeling terrified, not just about that ISIS was coming, but terrified that their children couldn't be safe at school, terrified about what was happening in Ferguson and other places.

I actually didn't enjoy being a child particularly at all even though I had nice parents in a comfortable place to live. Just because I was too confused in generating too many answers for myself that just scared me more.

I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.

It's a struggle every day, to stay present, not to become that...eight year old who was bullied and chased home from school. Some days I wake up and it's like I'm eight years old again. And I'm scared for my life, and I don't know if I'm going to be beaten up that day.

My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

I have friends who have had PTSD, and you can get it from other things than war.

I grew up very insecure. From the time I was little I used to hide under my mother's dress.

I find it's usually the bullies who are the most insecure.

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.

I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it's like, 'Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?' I think it comes from being really poor as a kid.

Every single person in jail for a violent crime had a nightmare childhood.

I was tortured, and probably half of it was deserved, but I was bullied - so much so that there were days when I was like, 'I can't go to school today.' I was too scared.

As a kid, I was terrified. I was a bed wetter, and I had to go to sleepaway camp every summer, which was humiliating and terrifying. I had lots of insecurities and scaredness.

It's true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.

I realized that bullying never has to do with you. It's the bully who's insecure.

I'm pretty mad at horror films for ruining my childhood.

I was mugged when I was 12. I had a portable radio, and I ran into this building and these two guys came in and hit me, busted me up and took the radio. After that I was very paranoid and I started taking kung fu and karate. But I didn't want to fight.