SUNDAY BABY

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children. It takes a very long time to become young. All things truly wicked start from innocence. For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. In their innocence, very young children know themselves to be light and love. If we will allow them, they can teach us to see ourselves the same way.

One day you’re innocent, then circumstances find you in an unlikely situation and you wonder how you could have been so stupid. I suppose I should be thankful. Being framed for a crime is all a part of growing up. People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but M says we have to face into the future now. 

Love wasn't to be measured, much less restricted, by methodology. Love isn't a method. Love is a faculty of the highest order, imagined or unimagined. Love isn't an activity. Love is an experience. Love is the second coming of innocence. Maturity is the moment one regains one's innocence. No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing. There's nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children; it doesn't even have to matter what they're laughing about.

You have to earn your own innocence, M says. You have to grow up and become innocent.