“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old…At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself.”

Walter Murch

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“Daddy made for us himself elaborate kites that needed to be taken miles out of town to a pasture long enough (and my father was not afraid of horses and cows watching) for him to run with and get up on a long cord to which my mother held the spindle, and then we children were given it to hold, tugging like something alive at our hands. They were beautiful, sound, shapely box kites, smelling delicately of office glue for their entire short lives.”

Eudora Welty

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“Here is my theory: I am all the ages I’ve ever been. You realize this at some point about your child—even when your kid is sixteen, you can see all the ages in him, the baby wrapped up like a burrito, the one-year-old about to walk, the four-year-old napping, the ten-year-old on a trampoline.”

Anne Lamott

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“You did not hear them coming. You hardly heard them go. The grass bent down, sprang up again. They passed like cloud shadows downhill…the boys of summer, running.”

Ray Bradbury

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“The vast trove of Brontë juvenilia is larger than all their published works put together. Most of the material was recorded in nearly microscopic handwriting, on tiny folded sheets of paper–some only 2 inches by 1½ inches. These were stitched and bundled together, complete with title pages and back covers made from scraps of wrapping paper and bags of sugar.”

Carmela Ciuraru

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“It was my father who insisted on turning everything into a treat. I remember his showing me how to eat a peach by building a little white mountain of sugar and then dipping the peach into it.”

Mary McCarthy

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“Today I got a letter from a man who said he had spent his childhood among characters such as I had portrayed. Poor man. He said since he had seen them in print they burdened his conscience less.”

Flannery O'Connor

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“I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable. He was older by five years, Jack Sendak. He wrote a number of books. He was very, very, very gifted. More importantly to my life, he saved my life. He drew me away from the lack of comprehension that existed between me and my parents, and he took his time with me to draw pictures and read stories and live a kind of fantastical life.”

Maurice Sendak

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“Why I miss the trolley cars. Because unlike everything and everybody else in the U.S. they did not swerve from their ancient path. And because as a boy (thousands of years ago) I went to Coney Island in a trolley car, and saw grass growing between the tracks and because it was an open trolley, with the conductor on the side hopping from row to row to collect his fares (his left arm holding the rail as he hopped) and because it seemed to me then (as does not happen now on the bus) that the other passengers were all my family, all Brooklyn. And because as we neared the sea, and could see its blue glare on the surface, everyone (at least in the back row) burst out singing.”

Alfred Kazin

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“We were not children together but we are now.”

Dean Young

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“I know when I was a kid we used to throw the football out of a first-floor window. We never went to a play space; the play space began immediately. Play was inspired, not organized.”

Louis Kahn

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“Claire knows our household spiders freakishly well. She names them all: currently we have Abigail behind the front door, Puddles in the bathroom, and a wandering Fiona. Claire monitors their webs, diagrams their whereabouts, and worries over their diets. She wonders whether it is ethical to toss an insect Abigail’s way if it seems none are finding their way to her web themselves. She puts up notes to reroute guests if their ramblings might disturb one of our arachnid roommates. She knows our household spiders every bit as well as I know the neighborhood crows, and I’m impressed with her studies.”

Lyanda Lynn Haupt

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“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”

Eudora Welty

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“Of course it’s easy to see why they both overprotected me, why my father, before I could wear a new pair of shoes for the first time, made me wait while he took out his thin silver pocket knife and with the point of the blade scored the polished soles all over, carefully, in a diamond pattern, to prevent me from sliding on the polished floor when I ran.”

Eudora Welty

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“Kids don’t plan to play. They don’t go: ‘Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It’s gonna be a three-act.’”

Lynda Barry

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