A biography for Brian Sutton-Smithhasn’t been written yet.
“If you are going to take away war toys, then what are you to replace them with? Children need to feel courageous, brave, and assertive. They need to feel strong; that is the purpose of their play.”
“I keep trying to understand the phenomenon of why adults are so literal when children are so imaginative. Toys are a caricature of reality.”
“Play is always a fantasy, but once you get into the frame, it is quite real, and everything you do is real. You put acres and acres of real movement and real action and real belief in it.”
“A weakness of many of the self-oriented play theories is that they often sound too much like vain consumerism instead of being about the more passionate and willful character of human play, which involves a willingness, even if a fantasy, to believe in the play venture itself.”
“Play begins as a major feature of mammalian evolution and remains as a major method of becoming reconciled with our present universe.”
“The main point for me is that toys are incredibly more important than we realized.”
“To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed, as if one is assured of one's prospects.”