Childhood and Youth
Born in The Hague, the Netherlands Hans was the last born in a non-Christian family of colonizers with non-white blood, his grandmother having been half Indonesian. He was largely raised in Indonesia, but returned to Holland to join the Royal Netherlands Navy. Already as a teenager he had begun what would become an extensive collection of African-American music. As a junior officer, he began to study ship construction at Delft University prior to the start of World War II. There, prior to the war, Rookmaaker met and became engaged to Riki Spetter, who was Jewish.
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Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood and/or youth:
“... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.”
—Edna O’Brien (b. c. 1932)
“Indeed, my mother’s beautiful face still shone with youthfulness that night when she so softly held my hands and sought to stop my tears; but, precisely, it seemed to me that this should not have happened, her anger would have saddened me less than this new sweetness that my childhood had never known; it seemed to me that, with a hidden and impious hand, I had just traced the first wrinkle and made appear the first grey hair in her soul.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)