Bloom of adulthood. Try a whiff of that. On your back in the dark you remember. Ah you remember. Cloudless May day. She joins you in the little summerhouse. Entirely of logs. Both larch and fir. Six feet across. Eight from floor to vertex. Area twenty-four square feet to the furthest decimal. Two small multicoloured...

I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was seventeen years old, and all of...

He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn’t feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green,...

Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards—the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees—have been tinsel, not what...

Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they’d be different

I didn’t grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often did.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.

Above all, staring at my old bedroom ceiling, I feel safe. Cocooned from the world; wrapped up in cotton wool. No one can get me here. No one even knows I’m here. I won’t get any nasty letters and I won’t get any nasty phone calls and I won’t get any nasty visitors. It’s like...

There was no starting point for the rebellion, but I could mark an arbitrary one: that a grown-up was someone who, first and foremost, could drink a Coke at whim.

The adult world may seem a cold and empty place, with no fairies and no Father Christmas, no Toyland or Narnia, no Happy Hunting Ground where mourned pets go, and no angels – guardian or garden variety. But there are also no devils, no hellfire, no wicked witches, no ghosts, no haunted houses, no daemonic...

Stupid girl. You will never win anyone through pity. You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.

The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child’s need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant...

O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

I had been riding horses before my memory kicked in, so my life with horses had no beginning. It simply appeared from the fog of infancy. I survived a difficult childhood by traveling on the backs of horses, and in adulthood the pattern didn’t change.

Every child born into the world has a divine mission to fulfill.As the child grows into adulthood, he or she must act to fulfill the divine mission.

She had the feeling, the tingling, lingering sense that something or someone life altering was just over the horizon. She had no idea what it was, but she wanted to rush headlong to bring it to her.

Age is only a number. Keep an active life.

I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don’t have to think at all. It’s like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I...

A preserved childhood is better than a repaired adulthood

Camus-boy, you’re always going to be the same you, just older. It’s not like there’s a moment when you wake up and go, Shit, I’m grown-up, I don’t feel like myself anymore.’ I don’t tell him, but this is the scariest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Being grown-up should feel like a...

Being silly is still allowed, not excluded by adulthood. What’s excluded by adulthood is thoughtlessness, so be thoughtful and silly

To make a difference in the world, it only takes one optimistic person, who can gather millions of people to make the change.

Don’t you find it odd,” she continued, “that when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.

One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic.

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn’t hurt as much.

A man that knows your worth doesn’t need to be told how to treat you. That’s a given! You won’t have to question his feelings, his motives, nor his intentions. How will I know? You ask. See, he will freely show you how he feels and prove it consistently. If you’re settling for anything less...

If you manage to make it to some semblance of adulthood, just showing up turns out to be one of the kindest, most selfless things you can do for someone.

I once tried to give him a friendly little “drugs chat”. He politely corrected me on every single fact, then said he’d noticed I drank above the recommended guidelines of Red Bull and did I think I might have an addiction? That was the last time I tried to act like the older sister.

Magda looks at me as if I’ve gone mad. Or I’ve grown up. It’s kind of the same thing.

Children are the closest we have to wisdom, and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

It’s strange how in childhood it feels like tomorrow won’t come until the end of forever, but in adulthood it feels like the end of forever could come tomorrow.

On est forcé d’être des enfants toute sa vie. C’est pour ça que ceux qui veulent devenir des hommes sont malheureux. Vous voulez chanter l’opéra? On rit de vous. Vous voulez vous conduire en monsieur avec les femmes? Elles vous traitent de tapette si vous n’êtes pas champion avec des muscles gros comme ça. Vous...

Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.

I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.

Relax. You will become an adult. You will figure out your career. You will find someone who loves you. You have a whole lifetime; time takes time. The only way to fail at life is to abstain.

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...

I guess there’s a Use By date when it comes to blaming your parents for how messed up you are.I guess that’s what turning eighteen means.Time to own it.

Nobody truly becomes an adult. The child we have been is always there, deep inside of us. As time passes, we think we’re growing, but maturity is only an illusion; a hindrance to our free child soul.

Adulthood brings with it the pernicious illusion of control, perhaps even depends on it. I mean that mirage of dominion over our own life that allows us to feel like adults, for we associate maturity with autonomy, the sovereign right to determine what is going to happen to us next.

Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn’t matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not...

The whole time I pretend I have mental telepathy. And with my mind only, I’ll say — or think? — to the target, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a rollercoaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next...

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be… This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in...

Treasure the beauty of youthful life and the wisdom of adulthood.

When I was a child, I thought like a child.When I became adult, I seek a deeper understanding of life.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

If you can’t find any fun during childhood, you naturally won’t look for it as you grow up to maturity. You will grow ‘hard,’ and look upon fun as foolish. Also, if you don’t furnish fun for a child, don’t look for it to grow up bright, happy and loving. So, always put in a...

Isä ja äiti tekevät lapsia maailmaan josta eivät enää saa käsitystä ja jota eivät pysty ymmärtämään, heillä ei ole tarpeeksi järkeä tyytyäkseen toisiinsa, ainoaan mitä heillä on, rakkauteen jota kerran oli, olen varma että sitä joskus oli.

I’ve spent awhile trying to figure out where I’m going and the only thing I’ve come to realize is it doesn’t matter where, it’s how I get there.

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, “Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart.

When you’re finally a grown-up, one of the things you find is that there are no grown-ups.