A Quote by Lydia Millet

We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.

Lydia Millet

Quote Topics

About Against Bears Children Courage Curiosity Elephants Monkeys Nobility Our Our Children Read Selfishness Stories Stubbornness Teach Them Warn

Quote Author

Lydia Millet
American - Novelist
Born: December 5, 1968

The world will teach our children if we do not, and children are capable of learning all the world will teach them at a very young age. What we want them to know five years from now needs to be part of our conversation with them today. Teach them in every circumstance; let every dilemma, every consequence, every trial that they may face provide an opportunity to teach them how to hold on to gospel truths.

Rosemary M. Wixom

We don't think much about how our love stories will affect the world, but they do. Children learn what's worth living for and what's worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.

Donald Miller

I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part. He said, “What happened then, daddy?” I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out. I'm too tired to read. I'll read to you tomorrow.” So, he had a need to want to learn how to read. Don't teach children how to read. Don't teach them mathematics. Give them a reason to want it. In school, they're working ass-backwards.

Jacque Fresco

I'd teach them to read and to dream and to look at the stars and wonder. I'd teach them the value of imagination. I'd teach them to play every bit as hard as they worked. And I'd teach them that all the brains in the world can't compensate for love.

Karen Marie Moning

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

Neil Gaiman

Generations of black women have anxiously watched as our children walk out into a world set against them. We teach them how to respond to police and how to react to racist comments, knowing that these lessons are not guaranteed to protect our children.

Patrisse Cullors

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

George Carlin

On one tour, I was collecting stories about pet monkeys. You'd be surprised how many people have stories about monkeys. The problem is, most monkey stories end tragically.

David Sedaris

Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.

Madeleine L'Engle

The fairy tale that really scared me was Bluebeard. That's the one where he just kills one after another of these woman, these wives, that he lures up to the castle. I just think about fairy tales as stories women told their children to warn them? To keep them safe, to make sure they married up, all the things that would have safeguarded them in the olden days.

Meryl Streep

I believe that if a child has a feel for writing and wants to write, there is an audience. Children should just dive in and go at it. I would encourage children to write about themselves and things that are happening to them. It is a lot easier and they know the subject better if they use something out of their everyday lives as an inspiration. Read stories, listen to stories, to develop an understanding of what stories are all about.

Jean Craighead George

I think that cinema and the arts are central in our lives because we grow up and learn about the world through our exposure to stories. Parents use them as a tool to teach their children fundamental truths and values, much as adults can view them to gain exposure to cultures and individuals that they'd never be able to view in their own lives.

Forest Whitaker

It's never too early to teach your children about the tool of money. Teach them how to work for it and they learn pride and self-respect. Teach them how to save it and they learn security and self-worth. Teach them how to be generous with it and they learn love.

Judith Jamison

I hope that when children read my stories that they evoke images for children. I four stories can help children use their own imaginations and lead them to act the stories out or to embark on related research, they will learn more and learn to love reading more.