Childhood Awareness Quotes

At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.

You know, my daughters have been through their entire lives and knowing about my case.

He's only 4 years old, so I don't think he realized, you know, that I played so many years. Of course, we watch tapes here from the Stanley Cup years, but I don't think he realized how many years I played.

It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.

I was fortunate that by the time I was born, there were a lot of comforts and at the same time I lived in a neighborhood where it was brought to my eyes every single day that people didn't live like me. Every day I knew that many of my friends "got relief." That was important in my thinking about the world, thinking that not everybody lived that way.

I'm really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

I actually remember being in 3rd grade and piecing together in my head that one of my guy friends was homosexual.

One of my own kids was in a class with a friend who had two mums, and that was absolutely normal right from a very young age. I think it's important that we absolutely accept equality in every area whilst at the same time respecting that parents may have concerns about how young their children are when they become aware of these things.

I've always known I was gay, but it wasn't confirmed until I was in kindergarten. It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF.

I was conscious of my father's fame from the time I was 6.

I've known that people were racist and misogynistic and homophobic since I was very little.

I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five.

Everybody knows when you're a struggling family; you don't really know it when you're a kid. But you do know the difference between stress and moments of relief where there's, like, this happiness.

It is difficult to explain to children in the "overdeveloped" nations that not all children in the world have such beautiful and nourishing food. Awareness of this fact alone can help us overcome many of our own psychological pains. Eventually our contemplation can help us see how to assist those who need our help so much.

Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.

I was always like that, at 5 years old, just demanding equality. I thought it could all be fixed if you called attention to it.

Nowadays, kids know how a programme like Merlin is made and how it works. But the show just seems to grow in popularity the more it goes on.

It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal.

I can't really remember a time in my life when I didn't know something about what we call the Holocaust. It was this dark topic that I would know more about when I got older, but which was spoken about in hushed tones.

Children are paparazzi. They take your picture with their minds when you don't want them to see you at your worst. Trust me, they SEE and HEAR everything.

I always knew, even as a kid, that my mom had a really rough life, and I always wanted to make her feel happy and to make her feel good.

My mum had this amazing ability to deflect things, and from an early age, I knew what I was not supposed to talk about.

Children always know when their mothers are crazy - they just never admit it, not out loud, to anyone.

As a kid, you get to the stage where you realise the gender barriers that exist in society and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.

Maybe even at six or seven, I knew that, sweet as they were on the surface, all fairy tales needed a feminist shake up.