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….

The monsters were never under our bed, but in the forest our future.

Young people must appreciate the beauty of old age. The old people were once young.

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...

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

Adults were constantly auditioning, but for what?

He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last...

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...

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

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...

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.

A person can have a happy and fulfilling life without children.

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.

We were wiser as children if not for anything else but for our ability to always reflect. Reflection is a powerful tool to move forward into an enlightened stage of wisdom. Children reflect everyday about...

I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what...

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...

…because you are not trying simply to complete a set of books or toys or Weetabix cards, you are trying to complete yourself, to get back to the whole person you were before, as a...