Unhappy Childhood Quotes:

People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.

- John le Carre

topic: Unhappy Childhood, People, Literature

To be a social success, do not act pathetic, arrogant, or bored. Do not discuss your unhappy childhood, your visit to the dentist,the shortcomings of your cleaning woman, the state of your bowels, or your spouse's bad habits. You will be thought a paragon (or perhaps a monster) of good behavior.

- Mason Cooley

topic: Success, Unhappy Childhood, Bored, Good Behavior, Paragon

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

- Ernest Hemingway

source: Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.1087, Simon and Schuster

topic: Unhappy Childhood, Training, Mice

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

- Graham Greene

source: The Power and the Glory pt. 1, ch. 1 (1940)

topic: Love, Inspirational, Spiritual, Joys Of Childhood, Kid At Heart

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

- Marcel Proust

topic: Book, Reading, Childhood, Favorite Book, Inspirational Children

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'

- Sydney J. Harris

topic: Educational, Parenting, Childhood, Adulthood, Responsibility For Children

Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.

- Dave Pelzer

source: Dave Pelzer (1993). “A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive”, p.166, Health Communications, Inc.

topic: Childhood, Soul, Darkness, Parental, Darkness Of The Soul

One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to cope in ways you never had to.

- Piers Anthony

source: "Fractal Mode". Book by Piers Anthony, January, 1992.

topic: Inspirational, Happy, Letting Go, Happy Childhood, Unhappy Childhood

People who've had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given.

- Sue Grafton

topic: Happiness, Grief, Imagination, Happy Childhood, Unhappy Childhood

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.

- Brian Aldiss

topic: Children, Names, Childhood, Children Playing, Inner Child

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

- Thornton Wilder

source: Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer (1992). “Conversations with Thornton Wilder”, p.69, Univ. Press of Mississippi

topic: Childhood, Atheism, Unhappy, Unhappy Childhood

(An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours.

- Rudyard Kipling

topic: Childhood, Preparation, Unhappy, Discrepancies, Discrepancies Between

I don't think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. Until about the age of eleven or twelve, I had zero interests other than trying to steal gumballs from supermarket gumball machines.

- Michael Ian Black

source: "Michael Ian Black on Parenting, Pop Culture and His Worst Christmas Present Ever". Interview with Sarah Thyre, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 16, 2012.

topic: Depression, Zero, Thinking, Gumballs, Unhappy Childhood

They say that to be a writer you must first have an unhappy childhood. I don't know if unhappiness is necessary, but I think maybe some children who have suffered a loss too great for words grow up into writers who are always trying to find those words, trying to find a meaning for the way they have lived

- Cynthia Rylant

topic: Children, Growing Up, Loss, Unhappy Childhood

A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.

- Roald Dahl

source: "Danny, the Champion of the World". Book by Roald Dahl, 1975.

topic: Children, Growing Up, Fun, Parental, Being A Parent

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.

- Emma Donoghue

topic: Childhood, Unhappy, Said, Unhappy Childhood

Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that's fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur' - people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don't want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not.

- Michael Moorcock

topic: Character, Thinking, People, Unhappy Childhood

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

- Gertrude Stein

topic: People, Childhood, Unhappy, Communism And Socialism, Unhappy Childhood