“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”

“I thought of her as my childhood sweetheart, the idea being you're never too old to have one.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

“Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.”

Ali Smith (1962) Scottish writer

“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”

Jerome David Salinger book Nine Stories

“the late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood…”

Stephen King book Carrie

“No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

“Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Childhood may have periods of great happiness, but it also has times that must simply be endured. Childhood at its best is a form of slavery tempered by affection.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

“If you had an unhappy childhood, you will always want to sleep late in the morning.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist