Early Years
The son of Paul and Cora Lee (Fortier) Kantner, Paul had two much older half-siblings: a half-brother and a half-sister. His mother died when he was eight years old, and Kantner remembers not being able to attend her funeral, having been sent to the circus instead. His father, a traveling salesman, sent young Kantner off to Jesuit military school after his mother's death. It was in the school's library at age eight or nine where he read his first science fiction book, finding an escape by immersing himself in science fiction novels and music at an early age. When he became a teenager he went into total revolt against all forms of authority, and became determined to become a protest folk singer in the manner of his musical hero, Pete Seeger. He entered University of Santa Clara and San Jose State College, completing a total of three years before he dropped out to enter the music scene.
Read more about this topic: Paul Kantner
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)