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887c786 We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and--in spite of True Romance magazines--we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely--at least, not all the time--but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness. death life love growing-up birth growth self-respect lonely Hunter S. Thompson
e23a7d0 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. right-of-passage self-determination inspirational self-responsibility personal-responsibility growing-up innocence parenting Anne Frank
a6a17c2 Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost. life inspirational growing-up Betty Smith
3ffdee8 When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing. fall-of-the-gods growing-up parents John Steinbeck
beeda14 Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change -Clary Fray life growing-up Cassandra Clare
0812cc5 I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves. motherhood kids inspirational-life inspirational-quotes life-and-living living inspiring life inspirational parenting-children fatherhood growing-up parenting children childhood parenthood C. JoyBell C.
6023ff2 I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias. life maturity growing-up Maya Angelou
8e7c42a "I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread. You never bake bread, he wrote, and we were still joking. Then it's like I woke up and baked bread, I said, and we were joking even then. I wondered will there come a time when we won't be joking? And what would it look like? And how would that feel? When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. growing-up Jonathan Safran Foer
5b2b0dd Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut. wonder narrow-mindedness open-mindedness growing-up Jodi Picoult
d797f3c He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all. youth life loss-of-innocence truths growing-up innocence Cormac McCarthy
b40c8ca "Oh", she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow up-and marry-and change!" change island marry growing-up L.M. Montgomery
31a4cdf He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side. moving-on goodbyes growing-up Emily Giffin
a14f0b2 when we were kids laying around the lawn on our bellies we often talked about how we'd like to die and we all agreed on the same thing; we'd all like to die fucking (although none of us had done any fucking) and now that we are hardly kids any longer we think more about how not to die and although we're ready most of us would prefer to do it alone under the sheets now that most of us have fucked our lives away. kids sex poem poetry death life love bukowski growing-up die nostalgia Charles Bukowski
dae61ba It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. friendship life growing-up endings Stephen Chbosky
8aa2a60 It's hard at times, but it makes a kid strong in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that even though people are left behind, new ones will inevitable take their place; that every place has something good - and bad - to offer. It makes a kid grow up fast. kids life-lessons logan-thibault growing-up strong hard-times Nicholas Sparks
5256142 It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. music growing-up David Nicholls
dc74dad I don't want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I'll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it's possible to be. I'm growing and I don't know how to grow. I'm living but I haven't started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it's like I'm not here in the world at all and I simply don't exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid. existence life growing-up David Almond
efa31d2 "I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days. It overwhelms me as I'm sitting on the bus; watching the golden leaves from a window; a sudden burst of realisation in the middle of the night. I can't help it and I can't stop it. I'm alone as I've always been and sometimes it hurts.... but I'm learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I'm learning to make things nice for myself. To comfort my own heart when I wake up sad. To find small bits of friendship in a crowd full of strangers. To find a small moment of joy in a blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk an early morning in December, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying "I thought of you. I hope you're well." No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it's a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don't need anyone to confirm it. lovely gratitude happy trying feelings depression joy books learning life-quotes sadness friendship heart heal anxiety-disorder being-happy bus december mental-wellness panic-attacks minimalism breath deep self-care mindfulness healing prose plan breathing growing-up well sky worrying worries emotions panic moment regret learn recovery lonely sad night mental-health letters Charlotte Eriksson
bdf07a7 I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them. louisa-may-alcott little-women growing-up Louisa May Alcott
68352fa "People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could." -- maturity growing-up Heather O'Neill
0e2dc50 "The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be." dune growing-up Frank Herbert
ae158b9 I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them. moving-on life moving-forward growing-up growth self Roger Zelazny
cf706a7 Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives broken-hearts cutting-your-self depression emo emotion hopeless-romantic lfe-essons phases romance sorrow joy happiness life love inspirational childhood-trauma teenage-love infatuation growing-up helplessness crying parents bullying teenagers trapped childhood Thisuri Wanniarachchi
2cc4118 I think people make their own faces, as they grow. people grow growing-up Enid Blyton
5df35db How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way tiny ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement. loss growing-up memory J.K. Rowling
a0a5287 The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire. it growing-up Stephen King
8b0ce00 I used to think that when I grew up there wouldn't be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure. What I'm finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there's nobody watching. growing-up rules Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
dac04f4 I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were...miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around. growing-up John Green
b318951 I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins. growing-up Terry Pratchett
d8f3b56 That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty. life-lessons growing-up forgiveness L.M. Montgomery
c021b32 Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now. understanding relationships goodbyes growing-up endings Emily Giffin
ac09932 The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all. dance confidence babies groove one-hundred-demons lynda-barry dancing grandma self-love growing-up demons cool stupid Lynda Barry
a8e0945 "Q: I want to be an author when I grow up. Am I insane?" Neil Gaiman: "Yes. Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author." goals-in-life authors growing-up goals writers Neil Gaiman
50f3789 ...I didn't run away to come home the same. -Claudia change growing-up running-away E L Konigsburg
46947a2 Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own. life growing-up Neil Gaiman
e657a8a This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and classified. Being a high school student was the first step toward becoming a domestic animal. work education life growing-up high-school childhood Ryū Murakami
0a52acf Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer? imagination dreams hope growing-up leaving Betty Smith
4cefc6f It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief. growing-up souls Philip Pullman
5fdef33 It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. poetry growing-up Billy Collins
ca0b70b You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you. l-m-montgomery growing-up L.M. Montgomery
7c121fb I don't like being with grown-up people. I've known that a long time. I don't like it because I don't know how to get on with them. kids youth growing-up teachers teach teaching nostalgia Fyodor Dostoyevsky
aebebaf Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. metaphor life inspirational growing-up John Green
e85ef76 l'lm w'lwn lkhyb@ wlkab@ l twjd ltHznn wltjrdn mn lqym@ wlkrm@, wnm wjdt ltzydn nDjan wSfan pain growing-up survival Hermann Hesse
c8b4709 I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.' ... We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations. growing-up children Neil Gaiman
0f9777e "A self-made man" - not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of myself. I'm going to begat myself" women inspirational growing-up Caitlin Moran
c31664a It occurred to her that nobody really knew what anybody else was upset about, and that seemed like a terrible thing. growing-up Kate DiCamillo
2199858 It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice...Well, anyway, when I grow up, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. growing-up L.M. Montgomery
5266ac4 Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary. penitentiary reform-school the-last-good-country nick-adams maturity growing-up Ernest Hemingway
971e1bc I realized if I didn't just go, I'd never go. Going was the key. It didn't matter where I was headed just as long as I was headed somewhere. ~ Ben Davis adventure-travel conquering-fear leaving-home growing-up traveling Jayden Hunter
500d825 The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter life inspirational haruki-murakami survivor growing-up hard trees growth survival strong Haruki Murakami
0cd0793 I guess that's what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn't. But it is all right. love growing-up Beverly Cleary (Author)
30d6a5b It was too late. Maybe yesterday, while I was still a child, but not now. I knew too much, had seen too much, I was a child no longer now; innocence and childhood were forever lost, forever gone from me. growing-up William Faulkner
bd2df9f That was the problem, wasn't it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways. growing-up Mark Haddon
8639b8b That's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them l-m-montgomery growing-up L. M. Montgomery
6c17360 Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. hope growing-up innocence journey J.R.R. Tolkien
005153d Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science. reason maturity growing-up childhood Richard Dawkins
bac63cb Childhood anxieties, childhood fears, never disappear entirely. They fade, but not away. growing-up Lauren Bacall
e31e321 The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. inadequacy growing-up fear-of-failure school Sylvia Plath
39aa9ff It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own. love growing-up parenthood Bill Bryson
70bbab5 They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them. youth growing-up George Eliot
7d6f6cc Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever... paddy-clarke roddy-doyle coming-of-age growing-up Roddy Doyle
2609989 And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again. grief greed death saddest-thing the-princess-and-the-bear lost-innocence the-end too-late growing-up regret lost Orson Scott Card
8d47f66 Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand. turtlenecks growing-up beatnik poet Charles de Lint
1f1c47e "Do you ever plan to grow up, Veltan?" he asked. "Not if I can avoid it, no." inner-child growing-up David Eddings
77c4d40 "you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?" he said. I looked at him. He said, "her punishment is being her," past-and-present growing-up punishment Curtis Sittenfeld
85e8fe6 The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances. For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way. And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself. Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again. And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. introspective growing-up poignant Cynthia Voigt
380b7b5 In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure, death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting. life-lessons growing-up wishful-thinking Cormac McCarthy
49f46c0 Anna is part of a generation that often seems frozen in place by their unreleting sense of irony. Virtually everything people believe in can be exposed as possessing laughable inconsistencies. And so they laugh. And stand still. time growing-up Scott Turow
16c281c "One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often won't tell you- because they've got their own agendas, or because they want to shield you from the hard truths "for your own good." Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible..." life growing-up childhood Robin Wasserman
0c4c834 But, really, are there any guys out there who aren't jerks? I don't even know any grown-up men who aren't jerks. juveline jerks growing-up dating Margaret Peterson Haddix
bd351aa ...TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. 1960s-nostalgia chores growing-up summer nostalgia Pete Hautman
26b59b9 Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience. growing-up parents Julian Barnes
3aa5746 The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. wilhelm-stekel growing-up Wayne W. Dyer
09cfaa4 He's completely blown through his younger years like his childhood was one big cigarette to smoke carelessly. wasted-time smoke cigarette growing-up kid child young childhood memory nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
1826994 Yes, you're right. It's part of growing up, I suppose. You always have to leave something behind you.u youth growing-up leaving left-behind growth Neil Gaiman
a7245ab It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men-first boys, then other boys, then men, men, men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over when they happened. history growing-up men-and-women Elizabeth Kostova
2cc4b27 I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn. time-passing growing-up mother Jodi Picoult
9eb28fb Where is the happiness, the sunshine, where are those thick skittles of wood which crashed and bounced so nicely, where is my bicycle with the low handlebars and the big gear? It seems there's a law which says that nothing ever vanishes, that matter is indestructible; therefore the chips from my skittles and the spokes of my bicycle still exist somewhere to this day. The pity of it is that I'll never find them again - never. nostalgic growing-up melancholy remembering Vladimir Nabokov
b4dbfa8 "Kipster is a perfectly valid word," Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. "Okay, so what does it mean?" Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it... it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her. "Well Sarah's on drugs again and that's why she did it in Mario's backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid's been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there's a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won't go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and...." Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she'd learned it from Jud's death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days." suicide words funny 80-s argue kipster cape-breton nova-scotia boring eighties drama-queen scrabble maturity coming-of-age canada pollution growing-up baby teenage fighting eating gossip bullying scary game drama self-harm nostalgia rumors Rebecca McNutt
63a8163 We realized that the version of the world [our parents] rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn't give a damn about lawns. growing-up parents Jeffrey Eugenides
60bf912 "Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa's forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. "What?" identity daughter growing-up parents mother father human-nature roles David Mitchell
0bf831b "One longs and longs to be grown up, doesn't one?," she said, "I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But life is not nearly as that simple when one finally does grow up." growing-up Mary Balogh
7a00bf5 He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a fish in a pond. It's drying up. You have to mutate into an amphibian, but someone keeps hanging on to you and telling you to stay in the pond, everything's going to be all right. existence life growing-up Jack Kerouac
e781403 For your information, Lester, there are at least five wonderful parts of the female body that can be viewed by the owner only with a hand mirror. woman human wonderful brother-sister-relationships female five genitals teenage-girl puberty sister human-body growing-up womanhood teenager mirror sexuality Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
7a73b85 You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you used to be, but then after a while the sentiment takes over, and the sadness, because you know for a fact that you can't ever bring any of it back again. You just can't. war growing-up Tim O'Brien
419c4e8 She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all. maturity growing-up childhood George R.R. Martin
b36ec51 I know more about my father than I used to know: I know he wanted to be a pilot in the war but could not, because the work he did was considered essential to the war effort... I know he grew up on a farm in the backwoods of Nova Scotia, where they didn't have running water or electricity. This is why he can build things and chop things... He did his high school courses by correspondence, sitting at the kitchen table and studying by the light by a kerosene lamp; he put himself through university by working in lumber camps and cleaning out rabbit hutches, and was so poor he lived in a tent in the summers to save money... All this is known, but unimaginable. Also I wish I did not know it. I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. family growing-up parents Margaret Atwood
20c3944 Selena was born in a generation that had grown up on the edge. She'd grown up knowing that the little child starlet who voiced Anne-Marie on 'All Dogs Go to Heaven', Judith Barsi, had been murdered and set on fire by her own father. She'd grown up knowing that school shootings were more common than winning the lottery. She'd grown up in an age of terror. murder fear judith-barsi millennial-quotes school-shooting millennials growing-up terror Rebecca McNutt
694fb2d Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings. difficulty growing-up science-fiction Orson Scott Card
de3efa9 "What are you doing?" Alecto asked in surprise, stepping back. Laughing brightly, she dragged him towards the greenhouse, the shattered glass reflecting rainbows as brilliant as a million Kodak flashcubes, glittering as they were cascaded through the breeze. "See, don't be afraid of the glass, it can't hurt us," Mandy laughed, spectacularly eccentric, her eyes reflecting the fallen glass. "I wasn't afraid of the glass, but this isn't a very secluded place that you just decided to vandalize," Alecto cautioned, smiling despite his words. Before Mandy could reply, she heard loud whispering in the air, behind the trees... it sounded like a group of people, all whispering in unison... "Somebody's out there," she exclaimed nervously. "Yeah, you're right," Alecto replied. Suddenly a sharp new vibrancy seemed to fill his eyes and he smiled coldly, taking the tree branch from Mandy and rapidly smashing in all of Mrs. Matthias' stained glass house windows with it. Blue, green, yellow, red, turquoise, purple and an array of other colors showered through the sky noisily, sounding like wind chimes and crashing waves. "They'll go away," he told her, glancing up at the sky. "...Alecto, do you like me?" Mandy questioned, holding out her arms like a lopsided scarecrow as the glass fell through her dark red hair. "Yeah, sure," he answered. "Will you be my friend, then? A real friend, not just another person who feels sorry for me?" Mandy asked. "...Alright, Mandy Valems," Alecto agreed." depression fun friends funny friendship love colored flashcube greenhouse scarecrow stained-glass vibrancy wind-chimes kodak cape-breton nova-scotia glitter cut air whispering yellow waves best-friends sorry green sharp vandalism blue canada glass growing-up red shatter trees noir friend house smile children crashing noise nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
5e43dfb It's very important my parent's don't think I'm starting to fall in love with people, because then they might notice that I'm growing up, and I'm kind of trying to keep it a secret. I think it will cause an incident humour feminist funny secret growing-up Caitlin Moran
2f4fad4 Grow up and you turn into burglars and get shot, or worse, they make you wear a coat and tie and stash you in the First National Bank behind brass bars! We gotta stand still! Stay the age we are. Grow up? Hah! All you do then is marry someone who screams at you! growing-up Ray Bradbury
08d9a93 It wasn't right that you could only understand your parents' pain once you'd experienced the things they had, and by then they were gone. pain life-lessons wisdom maturity growing-up parenting knowledge parenthood old-age J. Courtney Sullivan
6cef606 I know who I want to be and I want you by my side as I become that person. love growing-up Katie McGarry
9c59170 "You are young," said my father. "You won't get any younger even if you clean your teeth twice a day." "You'll get older," said my mother, "that's what happens." "Then what happens?" "You won't be able to find the treasure." "Will I be too old to look for it?" "No, but you'll be looking in the wrong place." -- youth treasure growing-up aging Jeanette Winterson
3644ee8 As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood. nelson-angstrom rabbit-angstrom growing-up frustration parenthood John Updike
baccc2f It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33 -- but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all. maturity growing-up H.P. Lovecraft
b9ddebb "The "child" was an invention of the seventeenth century; he did not exist in, say, Shakespeare's day. He had, up until that time, been merged in the adult world and there was nothing that could be called childhood in our sense. Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up - that is our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice." growing-up Marshall McLuhan
adfc118 Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us or we light a candle to see by. We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up.... Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it. good light inspiration darkness raising-children growing-up evil Madeleine L'Engle
57b9801 How do we teach a child--our own, or those in a classroom--to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have--or need--answers. compassion life growing-up difference teaching children Madeleine L'Engle
de16327 I cared about Ben, but I was never in love with him. I was in love with what it said about me that I had a boyfriend like Ben, and that's just different. romance christianity love girlfriend growing-up in-love Nadia Bolz-Weber
d65db57 Not everybody gets to grow up. First you have to survive your childhood, and then begins the hard work of growing into it. growing-up Gail Godwin
9a4fb13 I'll tell you something,' Arthur said. 'Until a certain age, everyone thinks their parents are heroes. Then they grow up a little, start to understand a little more of the world, and they realize their parents are just people. It destroys them, just a little bit. But it's part of becoming an adult. Everyone goes through it. You, on the other hand--your parents really are heroes, at least to everyone else. It's a bit remarkable, really. You never went through that disappointment of finding out your parents are just people. growing-up-pains growing-up-quotes growing-up Carrie Vaughn
1e6e565 Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do. family-relationships growing-up parenting Sebastian Faulks
228338f I used to joke that we had prepared ourselves for a time like this by living with Mother. The problem with such a state of affairs was not that you did not get to do what you wanted---sometimes you did---but the effort to appease or resist the reigning deities left you so exhausted that it prevented you from ever really having fun. To this day having fun, just plain enjoying myself, comes at the cost of a conviction that I have committed an undetected crime. growing-up mothers-and-daughters Azar Nafisi
7e93d05 ...the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman and didn't like it. growing-up Louisa May Alcott
0c14fae "Thank you Jonah." He lowers his head at the break in my voice. I ignore the moisture in his eyes and pretend that mine don't sting. "For what?" he whispers. " For showing me that people can change. Even if it is one person out of a million." young-adult life-lessons katie-mcgarry stella touching-moments emotional jonah growing-up crying Katie McGarry
6786466 The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I'm coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light - A kind of measles of the spirit A mumps of the psyche, A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, But that is because you have forgotten The perfect simplicity of being one And the beautiful complexity introduced by two But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit At four I was an Arabian wizard I could make myself invisible By drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a solider, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window Watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly Against the side of my tree house, And my bicycle never leaned against the garage As it does today, All the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, As I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imagry friends, Time to turn the first big number. growing-old passage-of-time ageing growing-up Billy Collins
f8cdef8 How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. catch-22 growing-old ageing growing-up growing-older Joseph Heller
e4c945c "7 Up soda pop mixed with bright pink grenadine with a chemical-tasting maraschino cherry stuck to the plastic straw. It was one of those drinks marketed for children, but Mandy could see that she wasn't the only adult ordering one. For some reason or other these old-fashioned restaurants always seemed to attract old ladies ordering strawberry Jell-O with whipped cream, truck drivers ordering "worms and dirt" (chocolate pudding with Oreo cookies squished over the top in a glass bowl, fruit-flavoured gummy worms over the cookie crumbs) and businessmen trying not to get syrup from their hot fudge sundaes on their neckties and tailored suits. Mandy figured that maybe they were all trying to grasp a time way back in the past when they were all little children, excitedly ordering desert for a special occasion under the warm incandescent light from above, cheerful and bouncing music filling their minds. Hurriedly she ate the food, paid the tab and hurried back to her car in the bitter wind, not wanting to stick around for very long." music adult bounce businessman cherry shirley-temple swiss-chalet diner canada growing-up kid wind car desert childhood memory snow Rebecca McNutt
a05821c From then on, I was terrified that I or one of my parents were going to die. My mother worried me the most. She was the force around which our world turned. Unlike our father, who spent his life in the clouds, my mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all of our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdrom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos. motherhood life chaos growing-up parents mother father Nicole Krauss
5dd540e The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are bot failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better. kids growing-up teenagers zombies Laurie Halse Anderson
d5081a0 "Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's . Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here. You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind. If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it? music growing-up Jonathan Lethem
afb0050 Each of Nora's children had arrived on this earth as him or herself, the more she knew them, the more she felt it to be true. They were so different from one another, and from her. motherhood personality individuality growing-up parenting parents mother parenthood J. Courtney Sullivan
9c343e6 That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Oh, and by the way... there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid. Deal with it. god santa-claus growing-up Ernest Cline
cd53a5c Mam said I was growing up. I felt that I was dying. growing-up Delia Sherman
2e469cc I was seeing something I didn't understand and did not want to. No I wasn't. I was seeing something I had always understood and wanted to understand better. humor growing-up Jane Gardam
eded18d I made him walk on a lead and he jumped for joy, the way creatures do, and children do and adults don't do, and spend their lives wondering where the leap went. dogs joy jumping-for-joy growing-up children Jeanette Winterson
1a20f16 I'm saying that children are not supposed to get along with their parents. Your parents are not supposed to be your best friends. There's supposed to be some element of rebellion. That's how you define yourself as a person. family-relationships the-corrections jonathan-franzen growing-up parents parents-and-children Jonathan Franzen
4469757 The afternoon had passed to a ghostly gray. She was struck by the immensity of things, so much water and sky and forest, and after a time it occurred to her that she'd lived a life almost entirely indoors. Her memories were indoor memories, fixed by ceilings and plastered white walls. Her whole life had been locked to geometries: suburban rectangles, city squares. First the house she'd grown up in, then dorms and apartments. The open air had been nothing but a medium of transit, a place for rooms to exist. nature life indoors lake growing-up rooms sky house home thought Tim O'Brien
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