You battled monsters. You sweat and cried your way to this one prolific moment where you finally realize that those dark days and sleepless nights were pre-requisites to your becoming.

I wish on one of the stars for divine orchestration and save the rest of them for all of the other girls in the world who will feel like I do tonight.

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...

People and birds were alike. Things happened that hurt them or made their lives harder. All the time. But losing someone or something important didn’t mean the end of everything. It meant you had to...

One must always be aware, to notice—even though the cost of noticing is to become responsible.

It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on from something that was never there to begin with. That’s one of the dire things about escaping from childhood. Eventually you grow up and realize the things you wanted...

I think about how maybe it’s not things that change but people that change, and maybe that’s the change everyone is really talking about.

I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids...

It’s really best not to tell people when you feel bad. Growing up is about keeping secrets, and pretending everything is fine.

I’m at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

And then I know I’m being a man, not just some kid who’s upset and wants it his way.

…I didn’t run away to come home the same. -Claudia

… and it was quite a sad thing,the way I watched you sleep like nothing could go wrong and I did not want to harm it, I did not want to blur it, but how...

There’s no magic ruler by which we’re all judged and weighed, not in this life. If you wait for someone to tell you it’s time to grow up, you’ll wait forever. Some people, quite happily,...

the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.

Young women dream of romance and passion as men dream of conquest because those dreams are necessary goads to leaving home and growing up.

I still don’t know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to...

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was...

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.

worth it” was an understatement. Maybe then I would feel okay.

Growing up doesn’t mean that you are older than someone, it means that you are no longer an amateur.

I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to...

You said you want to became Hokage. I have become the Kazekage. If you are willing to bear the name Kage, you have to do what you must do.

surround yourself with people who are better than you,” and I was now living that mantra.

She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city

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...

…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...

When you choose to forgive the same people over and over again you do so because you don’t want to believe your time loving them was wasted. Bad relationships over time can become investments, that...

I would have stayed forever within the garden of Re-mose’s childhood, but time is a mother’s enemy.

When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as...

Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you’re grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.”Why do so many people seem to love...

Who told you you couldn’t come back when you’re grown? Was it the same person who told you grown-ups don’t cry or blush or clap their hands when they’re happy? Don’t try to say otherwise,...

We are not sure what we will become, only what we want to and don’t want to. We often become what we never thought we could, then we become fine with that.

go, go, go!

Before you know it you’ll be my age telling your own granddaughter the story of your life and you wanna make it an interesting one, don’t you? You wanna be able to tell her some...

That boy made me realize, for a while at least, that my parents were wrong, and I didn’t have to be like them.

It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child,...

He who hasn’t experienced a full depression alone and over a long period of time–he is a child.

You don’t have any control over anyone’s feelings.You can’t make your parents feel proud of you.You can’t make anyone like you.You can’t make anyone love you.You can make it easier for them, by sacrificing your...

The Holy Spirit is described as the Comforter, like a mother would be a comforter to her child. It is also said of the Spirit that He will lead us into all truth. Who instructs...

I wish wearing flat-irons on our heads would keep us from growing up. But buds will be roses, and kittens, cats, – more’s the pity!

At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else’s thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away...

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Hope, in anything but myself, is just way too dangerous right now…

I’m tired of justifying why I love someone. I’m done with the explaining.

There’s a different flavor to children’s literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.

Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

He considered the hard times in his life. All the things he had been afraid of. All those years wasted, he told himself, because I was terrified of being different. That’s why all us fifty-four-year-olds...

It’s my Kansas, it’s my Duke, it’s my North Carolina. Growing up here and growing up as a little kid during the national tournament and helping out in the dressing rooms with my dad, watching...