Time & Perspective Quote by Carlo Collodi

Childhood, in Collodi's hands, isn’t a pastel idyll; it’s a body with urgent demands. The line starts with a sly temporal trick: “in a few moments” compresses experience so hunger feels like a plot device, something that accelerates faster than reason can respond. Appetite isn’t merely noticed, it “grows,” a verb that makes need feel organic and inevitable, like a second puberty arriving on schedule.

The phrase “queer, empty feeling” is doing double duty. It captures a child’s half-formed vocabulary for bodily sensation, but it also smuggles in unease: emptiness as a moral and social condition, not just a physical one. That small “queer” destabilizes the scene, hinting that what begins as a mild discomfort can quickly become a dominating force. Then Collodi gives hunger a second escalation - “bigger and bigger” - the kind of blunt repetition that mimics a child’s thinking while also mocking how quickly minor wants become all-consuming.

“As ravenous as a bear” pulls the moment into fable territory. The comparison animalizes the boy, not to shame him but to underline how thin the line is between civilized conduct and raw survival. In the context of Collodi’s world - Pinocchio’s Italy of scarcity, moral instruction, and consequences that arrive with fairy-tale speed - hunger operates as both realism and allegory. It’s the engine that pushes children toward bad bargains and risky adventures, a reminder that “character” is hard to practice when your stomach is louder than your conscience.