'What can your kids teach you?' Well, I believe something different about kids. We don't own them, they have their own knowledge. From the start you have to make the choice to listen.
Comedy came early. I knew when I was a kid that I was silly, and I knew that I liked people who were funny, but I don't think I knew I was funny. I didn't really think about it.
When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.
When I first read the words 'introvert' and 'extrovert' when I was 10, I thought I was both.
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.
In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like medicine or engineering, it had a definite, valuable purpose: to foster 'comprehension.'
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 had a little insight into life that most kids probably didn't have. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father was a social worker. Through his eyes I saw the underside of society.
Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she met made any sense.
The attitude that poetry should not be analyzed is prevalent among many who consider themselves experts on children's literature. But I suspected that kids like to look closely at things and figure out what makes them go.
I think children understand the world better than adults do. Especially when it comes to how we treat other people.
Adults, Sophie has decided a long time before, were really bad at making up good excuses.
I have a 12-year-old daughter, and all the time people will say, 'Oh, she's young!" and you'd be so surprised what you can learn from that 12-year-old if you just opened up your mind.
