Quotes About Being An Only Child

#1. Hey, sister buzz-kill," she said languorously to Jen. "What crawled up your ass and died?"
"I don't know," Jen retorted. "What died and crawled up your ass?"
There were times I regretted being an only child. This wasn't one of them.

Jacqueline Carey

#2. Being an only child, I didn't have any other family but my mom and dad really, since the rest of my family lived quite far away from London.

Tom Hardy

#3. I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.

Alan Hollinghurst

#4. I was an only child. It's a great disadvantage being an only child.

Graham Greene

#5. But I could never see what was so awful and wrong about being honest. And I didn't think it had anything to do with being an only child. I believed it had more to do with the fact that I had an inherently low bullshit tolerance, and what the hell is wrong with that?

Josie Bloss

#6. being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die. There isn't a replacement toddling around; you're it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.

Gillian Flynn

#7. Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn - I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.

Billy Collins

#8. Children of course are monstrously conventional, repelled at once by whatever is off-center, out of whack, unmanageable. And being an only child I had been coddled a good deal (also scolded). I was awkward, precocious, timid, full of my private rituals and aversions.

Alice Munro

#9. Being an only child, my mother reared me very carefully.

Heber J. Grant

#10. There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die.

Gillian Flynn

#11. I had a very lovely childhood, and, being an only child, I'm very close to my mom and my dad.

Luke Evans

#12. I don't mind being an only child; never have. I am lucky, though, that I have my friend Emily, who grew-up very close to me and so, there is someone I have shared memories with. I would miss that if I didn't have it, I think.

Jennifer Ehle

#13. I was by far the youngest of the family, and at times it was like being an only child.

Paul Nurse

#14. Being an only child and losing both my parents at an early age, I have found that the friends I have made over the years are the people who help me get through life, good times and bad.

Fannie Flagg

#15. I really like to please people, and I think it's a symptom of being an only child.

Paloma Faith

#16. Being an only child is a disease in itself.

G. Stanley Hall

#17. As her mum always says, one of the advantages of being an only child is that you have no trouble amusing yourself.

Liane Moriarty

#18. They can't beat when I'm unhappy. They try and fix it; they'd fix the whole world if they could, just to make me feel better-even when it's none of their business. It's one of the many hazards of being an only child.

E. Lockhart

#19. I'm boggled by the idea of being an only child. I know nothing at all (I'm happy to say) about having had a cold and withholding mother, about being divorced. The more I've been writing novels, each novel I've written has become successively less grounded in anything approaching autobiography.

Anna Quindlen

#20. I was always busy doing something, being an only child.

Paul Smith

#21. The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

Maria Montessori

#22. Because of my unique experience as my mom's child, the beginning of my journey was more about me trying to figure out who I was on my own. My mom is one of the greatest moms and so supportive of all my siblings and of all of us being who we are, and not who she wanted us to be.

Tracee Ellis Ross

#23. I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe.

Roddy McDowall

#24. Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop.

Charlotte Eriksson

#25. I think that comedy is a good defense for a child. Because you know childhood is a nightmare as it is. And so why not use comedy and being funny as a defense to get through your life as opposed to drugs, alcohol and good looks? Because those things are dangerous when your young.

Joy Behar

#26. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

Jose Marti

#27. That's the most terrible thing about being a child; you're convinced that it's all your fault. Lulu

Ruth Reichl

#28. Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#29. The mother's love for her child is very strong in Korean society - almost on the borderline of being an obsession.

Bong Joon-ho

#30. And maybe that's being the third child, although my entire family are very resilient - very, very resilient.

Lynn Redgrave

#31. To send a child to rot in the prison of Cuba for the alleged sake of his own well-being is criminal hypocrisy.

Leonard Peikoff

#32. To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

#33. Since presumably the world exists for God's enjoyment, not in any simple sense, of course, but as you enjoy the being of a child even when he is in every way a thorn in your heart.

Marilynne Robinson

#34. The concept of doing something with child benefit, of changing the rules around child benefit, is something that has been being discussed for some time.

Theresa May

#35. As a child, I loved being onstage. I loved singing, I loved the lights, I loved the adrenaline. I even loved learning lines. I was completely obsessive.

Emma Watson

#36. I'm fascinated by twins. It's such an interesting thing. I'm an only child, so I don't have a sibling. But, if you think about the bond that siblings have, that intensifies so much when you think about being in the womb together.

Sarah Michelle Gellar

#37. With me it started as a child, going to the theater and being totally transported but also walking out of the theater thinking I was the protagonist in the film and reenacting the scenes.

Oscar Torre

#38. From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

Dick Cheney

#39. I think that's important for all ages, to not be afraid of being an individual. I grew up on my own, as an only child, so early on I think I was quite capable of making decisions by myself and being an individual.

Noel Clarke

#40. We not only respect babies, we demonstrate our respect every time we interact with them. Respecting a child means treating even the youngest infant as a unique human being, not as an object

Magda Gerber

#41. I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it's a way of being alone.

Christopher Buckley

#42. Being an adult, it seemed, was horrible. But being a child was awful too, and moving from one state to the other only meant you were moving closer to death, with so much and so little to talk about all at the same time, and how was that even possible?

Alison Espach

#43. An actress should never, ever, be asked to run beside a van in red disco boots for more than about half a block, and then only if her child is being kidnapped.

Roger Ebert

#44. I am a super social person. I'm an only child, so I thrive on social settings and being around my friends because I make them my siblings. When I'm not acting or singing or working on anything, I am making new relationships with people because, to me, my friendships are very important.

Hayley Orrantia

#45. Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time - and I liked it. I still like being alone.

Jeff Buckley

#46. And only well-informed, warm-hearted people can teach others things they'll always remember and love. Computers and TV don't do that. A computer teaches a child what a computer can become. An educated human being teaches a child what a child can become.

Kurt Vonnegut

#47. Being a mother gives you a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel.

Jodi Picoult

#48. As I very much liked to draw and paint as a child, I entered a special art program in high school, which was very much like being in an art school imbedded in a regular high school curriculum.

Jerome Isaac Friedman

#49. Nothing else seems out of the ordinary for a horrible haunted forest being inhabited by a child eating witch.

Seanan McGuire

#50. As it was, being a bad mother was child's play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn't do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul.

Mary Kubica

#51. Just once, I would like there to be something special about being the kid stuck in the middle.

Karen Tayleur

#52. You don't treat me like a child."
He smiled. "Of course I do, but you seem to have this ridiculous notion that being treated like a child means to be treated with less respect than an adult.

Derek Landy

#53. It's like going back to being a child again. Someone to bathe you. Someone to lift you. Someone to wipe you. We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, It's just remembering how to enjoy it.

Mitch Albom

#54. Nobody can know ... just how heavy a burden trying to protect another human being can be. I was still a child. I couldn't have understood the real meaning of my promise.

CLAMP

#55. A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself.

Laura Riding

#56. I love being a grandmother. That feeling you have for your own child - you don't ever think it will be replicated, and I did wonder if I would have to 'pretend' with my grandchildren. But my heart was taken on day one.

Joanna Lumley

#57. Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Erma Bombeck

#58. Being a part of the theater community has been important to me from the time I was a child, through my parents.

Lily Rabe

#59. It was like being lectured by an earnest, oversized child.

Megan Whalen Turner

#60. I always felt like I had to prove myself as a child, probably because other kids teased me about being a 'faggot.

Dean H. Hamer

#61. A mindful parent is one who is committed to practicing being present and awake, and to listening deeply to her child, moment by moment. Mindfulness depends upon awareness.

Shauna L. Shapiro

#62. The though revives in him the oldest memory of his life. A child sees a door closing: without knowing who it is that has just left, he senses it is someone he loves with all his tiny, still mute being.

Andrei Makine

#63. One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one's trouble does not make it any better.

Cesare Pavese

#64. I don't consider 41 being in prime of life. Even if I conceived a child tomorrow I'd be 52 by the time it was 10. I'm not sure I'd have the energy, and I find that quite scary.

Jeremy Northam

#65. The biggest secret of self-esteem is this: Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore a thing of value.

Maxwell Maltz

#66. To be a human being is to be a child of God

M. Bartolo-Abela

#67. Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Harlan Coben

#68. Care for your infant business or career as you would care for your infant child - with loving attention, with no expectation of any reward, being in the moment with it, accepting it as is, watching it grow, enjoying every step of the way.

Marc Allen

#69. I hated being a child because to be a child means that you are essentially the property of your parents, benevolently or not.

Molly Crabapple

#70. Spend more time doing things that make you forget about the time.

Charlotte Eriksson

#71. It was almost like being a child again because you felt like you were in your bedroom and it almost felt like no one was really watching you. So, you were just kind of having a bit of fun on your own doing silly voices in the bedroom.

Ashley Jensen

#72. My goal from being a child was to have a happy home life.

S.E. Hinton

#73. It gets tiresome being spoken to as if you are a child, even if you happen to be one.

Patrick Rothfuss

#74. I would love to be fooled. The innocence of child for the first time, seeing something and being in wonder is something that I long for because I'm tainted.

Criss Angel

#75. I was hardly a fan of being berated like a child even on a good day, so seeing as how the last few days had pretty much buried the needle on the suckometer, my ability to quietly take my lumps was rapidly evaporating.

Kate SeRine

#76. Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again.

Martin Scorsese

#77. I hope, by being honest about what happened to me, to help nourish a culture of honesty that might make something different - and better - possible. We really need to squarely face the issue of child abuse in America, and to look at our perversity, our illness.

Laura Mullen

#78. My impression, having been in the Norwegian government for several years, is that taking a child into care is an extremely serious decision which is really taken as a last resort, when the situation warrants it, for the well-being of the children.

Jonas Gahr Store

#79. Why did I think back then, that happiness was always just ahead in the future, when I would be an adult, able to make my own decisions, go my own way, be my own person? Why had it seemed that being a child was never enough?

V.C. Andrews

#80. Cry to god. If you do that just for a couple minutes with your whole being, just like a child who so badly wants a cookie. You will break through the barrier of the mind.

Frederick Lenz

#81. On the other side of the curtain, two separate wars were being fought. One was to save the life of a women who'd been beaten to near death by her husband. The other was to allow her child to have any kind of a life at all.

Jodi Picoult

#82. Guys like Todd Bridges never overcame being a child star. You can't have any big failures. I've always felt regular. I played organized ball at the rec league. At 13, they told me I sold 3 million copies. I didn't know what that meant.

Bow Wow

#83. I found myself immediately attracted to Pope John Paul II when, upon his election to the Papacy, his published speeches invariably called attention to the need for recognizing the dignity of the human being as a child of God.

Robert H. Schuller

#84. Each hour is a room of shame, and I am
swimming, swimming, holding my head up,
smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,
like being naked with the clothed, or being
a child, having to try to behave
while hating the terms of your life.

Sharon Olds

#85. Sometimes I couldn't help thinking that the unluckiest thing about being the thirteenth child was having all those older brothers and sisters telling me what to do.

Patricia C. Wrede

#86. When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind.

John Lennon

#87. I only have one child. But I am learning that there is a lot to being a parent that you did not expect.

Dee Snider

#88. To see the human condition in the old woman, in the child, in the model on the stand, in that particular human being, and to let the hand trace it, this act of adoration is called, 'drawing from life.

Frederick Franck