Nursery Rhymes Quotes

Writing, for me, really started in the '70s as a young child. I used to read a lot of nursery rhymes, and I learned a lot of those rhymes word for word.

When you think of things that influenced your life, Mother Goose influenced more people than almost any other thing, the rhythms of those poems. Everything after that was a bare imitation of some of those mysterious and materialistic poems.

Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.

I like Fisher Price music, nursery rhymes, and the alphabet song.

Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is.

Mother Goose, she's on the skids. Sure ain't happy, neither are the kids.

Baby, everything is alright, uptight, out of sight.

I'm in love with kid's stories and animation.

Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales

There was an Old Person of Bray, Who sang through the whole of the day To his ducks and his pigs, whom he fed upon figs, That valuable Person of Bray.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

I would go to an aunt's house, and she would let me play music, and she had 'The Last Poets' album. At that time, albums didn't have explicit stickers on them, so some of the songs had profanity on them, and I was moved by that. I would listen to those songs, to the flow, and I'd balance it back and forth with the nursery stuff I had.

Once upon a time, I was a little girl sick in the hospital, and my mother gave me a copy of 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' to comfort me.

Most of the books I read these days are children's books at bedtime.

I don't want to be a pop star. I want to be a nursery-rhyme star!

Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce.

Some children's music is aimed just at kids, and it can be very childlike.

They use the simple back and forth, the same, old rhythm That a baby can pick up, and join, right with 'em. But their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copacetic Using nursery terms, at least not poetic.

Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.

When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.

...to all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone.

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in part oral, because we become acquainted with poetry through nursery rhymes, which we hear before we can read.

I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.

Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse will speak when she tells fairy tales.

For the very young, there's nothing better than Mother Goose and anything by Dr. Seuss for the rhythms and language.