I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.

For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood.

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word.

There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.

Death is better than slavery.

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

I didn't have a happy childhood.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

I gave up my childhood for a career.

I had the pleasure, as Robin said, to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity.