I remember everything,’ Bette Midler flatly notes. ‘But you know how in life, you tend to hold grudges? Well, I don’t do that any more. Bad, bad stuff. I did as a young person, but...

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.

As a man begins to understand the sacrifices he must make to live the life he dreams of, he often loses his courage for such a life.

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from...

Moral obligations verses Legal obligations. Legally, you must abide by the laws of the land or face the consequences of being fined, imprisoned or both. Moral obligations tend to lean more towards a spiritual nature...

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...

The vast majority of incest begins years before the earliest conceivable age of consent. p4

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.

Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we...

This was when he first suspected that the kindly child-loving God extolled by his headmistress might not exist. As it turned out, most major world events suggested the same. But for Theo’s sincerely godless generation,...

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...

We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that ‘our most precious resource is our children.’ But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can...

The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by. We...

All fathers are liars . . . If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar.

The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to...

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...

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.

To both the racist and the puritan, childhood is not a time of life that we grow out of, as the life of the child grows out of the life of the parent or as...

But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage...

When I was a kid ‘¦I liked burning ants with a magnifying glass ‘¦.but I think that progressed into adulthood where I now believe in aliens.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

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...

Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

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 adult were once young.The young have not yet attained adulthood.The young must learn to appreciate the wisdom of elderly people and learn from their life experiences.

Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you’re ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can....

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.

Inside my house, nobody was home, except everybody, but it was easy to feel like those were one and the same.

I can take care of myself, but I can’t take care of myself and a child. I’ve decided to give myself up for adoption.

Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?” asked Milo politely.”You could,” said Alec, “but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does.”Milo tried as...

It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.

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

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.

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...

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...

Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you’re an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things...

They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had for ever closed behind them.

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.

The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. So claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what...

If adults want to take such chances (with marijuana) that is their business

My father moved out a week later. I hugged him at our front door and couldn’t bear to watch him leave with so much luggage.

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...

Vivien thought how ugly adults could be, how weak. So used to getting what they wanted that they didn’t know the first thing about being brave.

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

Like everyone I slipped into adulthood like a delinquent through the back door.

The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to...

So it was a crossroads summer, when the universe seemed to stand perilously still like an egg wobbling on a precipice, a regular rite of passage summer that saw us traverse the hazardous divide between...

You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12….