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I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky...more

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In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

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William Blake really is important my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

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. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday live...more

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I remember my own childhood vividly..I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them. (In conversation with A...more

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so that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psycho...more

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Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.

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I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.

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Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!

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But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!”And Max said, “No!”The wild things roared their terrible roars and...more

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Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.

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You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

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[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration ...more

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I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them

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It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.