Best 4519 quotes in «growing up quotes» category

High school will probably be better. I mean, some kids will still be jerks, but it's not so bad if you have at least one good friend. Someone who gets you.

His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or a piece of wood with a dandelion helmet, perhaps; but above all they require only the pure, strong, passionate, chaste, still-untroubled fantasy of those happy years when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us, when we are allowed to see, hear, laugh, wonder, and dream without the world's demanding anything in return, when the impatience of those whom we want so much to love has not yet begun to torment us for evidence, some early token, that we will diligently fulfill our duties. Ah, it will not be long, and all that will rain down upon us in overwhelming, raw power, will assault us, stretch us, cramp us, drill us, corrupt us.

His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds.

His sister. Sweet. But a seventeen-year-old in a gorgeous new dress does not want to be told by any sort of prince, Rescuing or Regular, that she reminds him of his eleven-year-old sister.

Hm. Didn’t you use to be a lot smaller?” “Yes,” said Jinx. “Because I used to be six.

Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.

Home will never be the same once you know what you are. Your whole life will change.

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

How do we deal with all the people we’ve been? What happens when we have to confront them?

How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.

How does one know you’ve “made it”? You no longer feel like you have anything to prove to anyone. You have no regrets or resentments from the past, anger that you’re working from. No people you want revenge on or songs you want to sing in order to finally speak your mind.  Instead, you work from a place of wanting to do the work only, without any attachment to the outcome.

How do you explain to a child who likes everyone in the world that adult life consists to a great extent of cutting people away?

However, now she was a schoolgirl no longer. She had discovered how to manage her hair, had been to one or two parties and a night club, and laid on lipstick with the idea that each layer was a layer of sophistication.

How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.

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.

How shall I tell you of the world you face Strident with sound of weapons and of hate, Make you aware now of the narrowing space Between the hope of mortal and his fate?

How you spend your time when you are not working or studying says everything about who you are and what is motivating your life.

I am 23 and I am learning what it means to be an artist, for I am not an artist, because it takes life and a life lived well, to the limit, to see the patterns in storms, but I am 23 and I am learning. I am learning shame and solitude, forgiveness and goodbyes. I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day, and you must build your own.

I am a complicated person with a simple life.

I am almost dizzied by a sudden knowledge, as cold as snow down my spine; that I, too, will grow up one day like everyone else, and look back and miss the years gone by, and the things I could have done, should have done. And growing up is suddenly not something to be impatient for, not all jam and buns and doing as one pleases. It is precisely the opposite.

I am a kind of joke, but the question is: which kind? My job is to keep everyone guessing.

I am a strong and powerful woman. I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman. I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else. I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman. I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way. Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities. I can do anything I set my mind to. I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.

I am a worried person with a stressed out soul, living a simple life with no capital.

I am a worried person with a stressed-out soul, living a simple life with no capital. I am gathering knowledge in every corner I can with the abilities I have. I'm reading philosophy, politics, history and fiction. Greek tragedies and the arctic waste. I'm studying psychology, economics, plant-based nutrition and I'm writing essays and manifestos, chasing bigger names with bigger frames, to ask a question or two, and I am learning to lead. I am reading to take the lead. Lead who? Myself. My own life. My own future. I'm not chasing you, or them, or anyone else; I am chasing me.

I am grown in so many ways, but in front of my parents I am still a child. I am having a hard time throwing off the skin that I pick and peel. I am the only one who can do it, but I can’t seem to let myself.

I am living a simple life with a complicated mind and I have yet to find a state of mind where I feel safe with who I am, where I am, with what I do.

I am constantly torn between the will to be seen and still hidden so god damn well, a contradiction I never figured out.

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow for I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired but empty and weary from drinking too much at all times and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak for I don’t speak much at all and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much or not at all and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not a poem but an elegy at my best but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that, but others are not.

I am not sad anymore. I am not weak or tender or quiet like you remember because the second you said those words and closed that door, I sold my soul to the part of myself I had buried in order to love you, to let you touch every inch of my rotten body, for I wanted to be touchable and not so strange. Not so sad and tender, like I’ve always been, they say, so I changed. And then your glances and words throwing knives with no return about my change of habits and ways of living, being, and I nodded and smiled, dying silently a little bit inside.

I believe in knowing who you are but without limiting yourself to your own expectation of who you are.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that it’s more important to learn to work with what you’ve got, under the circumstances you’ve been given, than wishing for different ones.

I am what you made me, Father.

I began to feel alternately too big and too small. First, I grew so big that I took up the whole street; then I grew so small that nobody could see me — not even if I cried out.

I believe ... that you must collect and pursue all your passions. Let your desires lead you to foreign territories. Your path might look scattered for now, like you have no direction or clear aim, but I believe that one day, all these ideas and spread-out skills will combine and create a creation of impact, a combined masterpiece of everything you found to love, and that will be your legacy.

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.

I can’t spend time with people I don’t enjoy. I can’t do it anymore as theater. I make choices, and that’s a beautiful thing about growing up, learning to say no, in a nice way, just say no. I have this friend…we just went different ways in life. Once he came to me and said, “Francis, you don’t like me anymore.” and I said “No, it’s not that I don’t like you, we’ve chosen different styles of life. I still have beautiful souvenirs of all the things we did together and how close we were, but the truth is it’s not that you bore me, but I don’t enjoy talking to you anymore and I don’t want to fight with you but there’s nothing in common between your life and mine nowadays”. I would have never said that but he asked me. So what could I say? I said the truth. Growing up has a bit to do with that, to be able to tell the truth, to show who you are, even if it hurts.

I could feel his hand on my waist, his arms around me, feel the rise and fall of his chest next to mine as I held my breath, and wished the sun would drop out of the sky.

I could turn up the volume on their songs and that loudness matched all my panic and fear, anger and emotions that seemed up until that point to be uncontrollable, even amorphous.

I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.

Idealizing Daddy is grand when you're five; it's crippling when you're twenty-five or thirty-five. For if you still believe in Daddy's miracles, you may not believe that you can make your own dreams come true. Worse, you may not even be able to formulate them without his guidance,

I’d ask you to be careful tomorrow, if I thought you’d listen to me,’ I said to him. He looked sympathetic but annoyed. ‘Mum, I’m not a baby anymore.’ Then sensing that I was on the verge of crying, he hugged me gently to his chest. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged me this way. With my face pressed next to his heart I whispered softly, ‘You’ll always be my baby.’ The hug grew firmer and the teardrops began to fall freely.

I did not see Pirahã teenagers moping, sleeping in late, refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions, or trying out what they considered to be radically new approaches to life. They in fact are highly productive and conformist members of their community in the Pirahã sense of productivity (good fishermen, contributing generally to the security, food needs, and other aspects of the physical survival of the community). One gets no sense of teenage angst, depression, or insecurity among the Pirahã youth. They do not seem to be searching for answers. They have them. And new questions rarely arise.

I didn't grow up in a Norman Rockwell house... my house was more akin to Norman Lear.

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

I do like the way people behave toward me and Theresa when we’re together-everyone’s voice changes to music, and we get all sorts of smiles.

Ich selbst hatte das verwirrende Gefühl, jeden Tag bestimmt hundertmal vom Kind zum jungen mann wieder zum Kind zurückkatapultiert zu werden.

I didn't begin life hating my grandmother. Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song." I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old....just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something.

I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, but I really wish there was something like a reset button on my life.

I don't know as much about children as I would like to. I am godmother to a wonderful three-year-old boy named dominic, the son of my friend Sophie. They live in Scotland, near Oban, and I don't get to see him often. I am always astonished, when I do, at his increasing personhood - no sooner had I gotten used to carrying about a warm lump of baby that he stopped being one started scurrying around on his own. I missed six months, and lo and behold, he learned how to talk! Now he talks to himself, which I find terribly endearing since I do, too.