Grow Up Quotes

We say release, and radiance, and roses,"

We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,
the field is humble, and the forest proud;
but over everything we say, inhuman,
moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.
Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on. And they do. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony. ~ William Ellery Channing

Jesus being born as a baby was God's way of laughing at a world trying to grow up too quickly. ~ Steven James

When we are youths in the Dominican, we pick up bats and balls because baseball is part of what we grow up with. The fun feeling you get playing keeps your head up when you encounter difficult times. ~ Vladimir Guerrero

When you grow up with parents like mine, you know without a shadow of a doubt that a love worth fighting for is a love worth keeping. The fight - that drive - the desire to have the person you love, love you back just as fiercely? That's all it's about. They showed me that when you want something, you don't stop until it's yours. ~ Harper Sloan

To grow up under really simple circumstances, and to understand that certain things were ornamental ... that made an impression on me as a child and is something I use. ~ Helmut Lang

All I know is that there are bastards. And that, if possible, I would really like it if you did not grow up to become one of them.

Because if there's just one thing I really wish I could teach you, it's to be kind. To not be a jerk. And you can trust me on this particular subject, because I have very extensive experience of being a jerk. I've got a PhD in behaving like an ass. ~ Fredrik Backman

I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil. ~ Charlize Theron

Like representative government, soccer has been imported from England and democratized in the United States. It has become the great social and athletic equalizer for suburban America. From kindergarten, girls are placed on equal footing with boys. In the fall, weekend soccer games are a prevalent in suburbia as yard sales. Girls have their own leagues, or they play with boys, and they suffer from no tradition that says that women will grow up professionally to be less successful than men.

'In the United States, not only are girls on equal footing, but the perception now is that American women can be better than American men,' said Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 'That's a turning point, a huge breakthrough in perception. ~ Jere Longman

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt. ~ Meghan Daum

On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called civilised life. "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two." The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a model - of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character. "For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is that of childhood, when he begins to colour and mould himself by companionship with others. ~ Samuel Smiles

If you could start children right from the beginning with this thought, you'd see the effect it has on their lives. In fact, I did this with my own children. Again and again, I told them there was a reason why they were here, and they had to find out what that reason was for themselves. From the age of four years, they heard this. I also taught them to meditate when they were about the same age, and I told them, "I never, ever want you to worry about making a living. If you're unable to make a living when you grow up, I'll provide for you, so don't worry about that. I don't want you to focus on doing well in school. I don't want you to focus on getting the best grades or going to the best colleges. What I really want you to focus on is asking yourself how you can serve humanity, and asking yourself what your unique talents are. Because you have a unique talent that no one else has, and you have a special way of expressing that talent, and no one else has it. ~ Deepak Chopra

Because if you grow up to be the kind of person who asks questions about who you are, why things are the way they are, and what we could do to make them better, then you still have hope for this world, and if you still have hope, my love, then so do I. ~ Mira Jacob

Don't ever call me Princess again," she said, head still resting in my shoulder.

"Did I do that?" I asked.

"Yes, you did."

"I don't remember."

"Driving back from Tsujido, that night. Don't say it again."

"I won't. I promise I won't. I swear on Boy George and Duran Duran. Never, never, never again."

"That's what Mama always calls me. Princess."

"I won't call you that again."

"Mama, she's always hurting me. She's just got no idea. And yet she loves me. I know she does."

"Yes, she does."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"The only thing you can. Grow up."

"I don't want to."

"No other way," I said. "Everyone does, like it or not. People get older. That's how they deal with it. They deal with it till the day they die. It's always been this way. Always will be. It's not just you."

She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. "Don't you believe in comforting people?"

"I was comforting you."

She brushed my arm from her shoulder and took a tissue from her bag. "There's something really abnormal about you, you know," she said. ~ Haruki Murakami

It's one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child... 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' As if growing up is finite. As if, at some point, you become something and that's the end. ~ Michelle Obama

I'm only waiting for my wife to grow up. ~ Grover Cleveland

We grow up in a world where satisfying our cravings seems to be the number one objective, every advertisement on television and the newspaper calls for one craving or another to be dealt with. When it comes to sex we are bombarded every which way, so much so, that we think solving our cravings is the only way and the right way. ~ Evan Sutter

Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it, and now I'm stuck observing these machinations or sex and status and dancing and parties and people sucking at each other under the bleacher seating like some kind of freak, when I'm not the freak; Rich is the freak. Clearly. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated, or I'm going to shoot myself in the head. ~ Ned Vizzini

All parents make mistakes. They're only human, so all of us grow up with at least a few invisible scars. But maybe that's okay, because the hard times are what make us strong enough to survive all the crap life throws at us down the road. ~ Alexa Land

Losing a parent is a hard thing ... I often sit here and think it would be great if mum and dad were alive and had a chance to see their grandkids grow up. ~ Wayne Swan

When young people grow up ... they shine so much that old people want to avert their gaze. ~ Tite Kubo

I wonder what I'm going to be when I grow up,' Rob asked himself.

'Well, not a film star,' Mike said. 'And not an all-in wrestler. Why don't you be a drunk? You don't need any talents for that.'

'It's got to be something in your blood,' Rob said. It was his view that all history was a matter of blood.

'That's a lot of bullshit,' Mike said. 'Hell, Australia was built by people who didn't know who their grandparents were. You can be anything you want to be, and you ought to be what you want to be, not what your grandpa was.'

'Well, what are you going to be?' Rob demanded… 'A drunk,' said Mike. 'I haven't got any talents. ~ Randolph Stow

I feel I have grown up. I am a man. It's important in my football too. When everything is good, I don't think you grow up fantastically, I think maybe you need a few problems to grow up. It is good if people in England have started to admire me. I think I have changed a little since the World Cup. I am stronger with my mentality and with my game as well. ~ Cristiano Ronaldo

Here was a woman, having a child by accident that she surely would come to love. As for me, through the accident of cancer i'd be leaving three children to grow up without my love ~ Randy Pausch

I remember what it was like to grow up in the South in the 1960s and 1970s. Discrimination isn't something that's easy to oppose. It doesn't always stare you in the face. It moves in the shadows. And sometimes it shrouds itself within the very laws meant to protect us. ~ Tim Cook

I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up ... These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with. ~ Mark Twain

We go to school so that when we grow up we can make lots of money, and we make lots of money so we can provide for our children, and we have children to provide for our retirement (because we don't have any money left). ~ R.M. ArceJaeger

He turned to Matt and gave a huge smile, one hand on her withers. James reached out and pulled Matt to him, and they stood there in a little circle. It felt disconcertingly like… a family reunion. Matt turned away from James‟s bright smile and looked at Miz in something akin to horror. Was she their… child? Miz nipped him. Hard. While snorting horse mucus all over him. Damn thing couldn‟t even blow her own damn nose. Would she ever grow up? ~ Anne Tenino

I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means. ~ Lily Tomlin

Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Children need to grow up and make their own decisions - how they want to pierce their bodies or do whatever they need to. ~ Kim Basinger

I was fortunate to grow up in a middle-class home with two hardworking parents who enjoyed both reading and mathematics. ~ Freeman A. Hrabowski III

Darcy rolled the quill between his fingers and looked with benign pity upon his cousin. "You should, you know. It's a wonderful feeling to be the head of your home, with a wife who adores you and whom you adore in return."

Fitzwilliam whipped out his pocket watch. "Oh, look at that. I have to run."
Ignoring him, Darcy turned his face to the fire, a besotted look in his eyes and a smile on his lips. "It's a good feeling to care for your family and their well-being. It makes you finally grow up, I can tell you." He sighed deeply and began attacking his figures once more, his mind filled with unlimited love and joy, thinking on his upcoming paternal responsibilities. "I myself find women to be unbelievably wonderful creations."

"I suppose you will continue with this treacle even as I beg you to stop."

"Well, think about it…" Darcy continued, looking up from his work.

Fitzwilliam groaned.

"They give back to you double and triple whatever little you hand them."

"I think I'm going to be ill, Darcy. Please stop."

"You hand them disparate items of food, and they give you back a wonderful meal. You provide them with four walls and a floor, and they give you back a loving home. You give them your seed," Darcy's eyes misted, his voice choked with emotion. "You give them your seed, and they give you back the most precious thing of all - a child…" They sat in silence together.

"And God help you if ~ Karen V. Wasylowski

No adult can bear a child's burden or grow up in his stead. ~ Maria Montessori

You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the undersides of leaves to see what's been there, figuring out what to do that won't clear a path for worse problems next week. Right now that's what I do. You ask why I'm not afraid of loving and losing, and that's my answer. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work--that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children's bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don't get lost.
Codi, here's what I've decided: the very least you can do in you life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyer nor the destroyed. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Loo, life is black and white. You don't know what's good for you, because you don't see the black and white! You don't see where the black lines end and where the white lines begin! You're going to grow up to be no good if you keep on that way. It's impractical. I only have one child, and I won't have her growing up to be impractical. I can't think of a worse thing to be than impractical! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Sea-Monkeys are hybrid brine shrimp and the brainchild of the mail-order entrepreneur Harold von Braunhut in 1957. When their crystallized eggs are submerged in water, minuscule crustaceans emerge; they can grow up to 2 inches long. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

I think it's almost better to start [acting] at a later age because you have more stuff to drawm from - more life experience. When you start too young, you grow up on a set. ~ Josh Duhamel

Oh, but we do age. We don't grow up. ~ Andre Aciman

You stupid, conceited fool! You know nothing! You're like a child, blind to everything but its own empty stomach! Well, grow up, Carl, and join the real world. Until you do, for God's sake leave me be! ~ Amanda Browning

Curiously enough, though, it was Jeanette who came home one day with a C on a test. Prior to that, B was the lowest grade any of us had gotten, and even a B caused Mommy to shake her head and ask, 'Did anyone in the class get an A? Then you can get an A, too. You just have to study harder.' But this time she looked at the C on Jeanette's paper and said nothing. Wasn't she going to lay into Jeanette? Was Doc so special that she could get away with anything? The rest of us were stunned. I, for one, resolved that if that's the way it was going to be, I was darned if I was going to work so hard at studying from then on.
Then Saturday came. Mommy roused Jeanette at 6:00 A.M., told her to dress in old clothes, and ordered her to the kitchen, where she handed Jeanette a bucket and scrub clothes. 'You and I are going to clean the kitchen from top to bottom,' Mommy announced. 'I'm going to teach you how to do it and do every bit of it right because that's what you're going to be doing for a living when you grow up'.
Jeanette was outraged. 'I'm going to be a doctor'!
'Anybody who gets a C on a test is either too dumb or too lazy to be a doctor. You're going to end up working in somebody's kitchen, so you'd better know how to do it. Now, start by scouring the oven. And I want it spotless'. ~ Yvonne S. Thornton

When you have a child, you start to dream of how this kid will grow up and make you proud. The only thing you can predict with 100% certainty is that the reality will diverge somehow from that dream. Some of our children will disappoint us by not being the scholars we hoped they would be. Some children will disappoint us by not being the athletes we hoped they would be. Some will disappoint us by coming out and telling us they are gay and they won't give us grandchildren ... the real question is not, what book can I read, what technique can I use to raise a perfect child? The real question is how will you handle that gap between the child you dreamt of having and the real child growing up in your home ... What I have learned is that any religion, if you do it wrong, will leave people feeling condemned and dismissed and unworthy and any religion, if you do it right, will leave people feeling cleansed and firmed. (118) Rabbi Harold Kushner ~ Carol Lynn Pearson

Little Red Riding Hood was stalked; Cinderella was abused; the Beauty had to live with a hideous Beast; Snow White was poisoned; Hansel and Gretel were meat for a cannibal… and then we wonder why our kids grow up with problems. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth. ~ Eudora Welty

Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let's call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers. ~ Douglas Wilson

If I'm in an unusual or extreme social environment, I always want to know what it's like to grow up there and experience it as normal, everyday life. And I want to know what sort of adults these children are going to turn into. ~ Mary Ellen Mark

You may not mean to, but you do seem to look down your nose at many of us mere mortals muddling along down here. I feel as though you think everyone should be better than they are. I certainly think you expect me to behave like some sort of perfect princess. But I'm just an ordinary girl who wants to grow up and find out where I belong in the world. ~ Emily Arden

Most people want peace without the aloneness of [spiritual] power. And they want the self-confidence of adulthood without having to grow up. ~ M. Scott Peck

You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.' ~ Geoffrey Canada

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost. ~ Mohsin Hamid

You grow up with a heightened sense of the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it wasn't until I became of age that I really had a great appreciation for the struggle that took place. ~ Terri Sewell

And you are a useless princess who knows absolutely nothing of the real world. You would be the very last person I'd choose to chain myself to. But apparently both our kingdoms - no. The whole realm needs this alliance, so what we want doesn't matter. I will do what I have to do, regardless of my personal feelings, and you will do the same. So sit down, grow up, and start acting like the kind of princess your people deserve." He snapped off the last syllable and abruptly let go at the same time so that I stumbled backward. ~ Betsy Schow

Seem that if baby get left in manger he would scratch up, bite up and dead by the third day. But white people think this be the greatest thing. The baby grow up and they kill him, and white people think this be even greater. It make plenty sense that white people would get so much mirth and joy out of this 'cause nobody kill for fun like backra. ~ Marlon James

Prior to my election, young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief. ~ Wilma Mankiller

Children know when they're loved. It's when you grow up that you're more easily fooled. ~ Samantha Sotto

It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. ~ Billie Jean King

Dear White Fella When I am born I'm black When I grow up I'm black When I am sick I'm black When I go out ina sun I'm black When I git cold I'm black When I git scared I'm black And when I die I'm still black. But you white fella When you're born you're pink When you grow up you're white When you git sick you're green When you go out ina sun you go red When you git cold you go blue When you git scared you're yellow And when you die you're grey And you got the cheek to call me coloured? ~ Steven Pinker

Well, you know what grown-ups are,' said Dinah. 'They don't think the same way as we do. I expect when we grow up, we shall think like them - but let's hope we remember what it was like to think in the way children do, and understand the boys and the girls that are growing up when we're men and women. ~ Enid Blyton

The kingdom of heaven promised us certain things: it promised us happiness and a sense of purpose and a sense of having a place in the universe, of having a role and a destiny that were noble and splendid; and so we were connected to things. We were not alienated. But now that, for me anyway, the King is dead, I find that I still need these things that heaven promised, and I'm not willing to live without them. I don't think I will continue to live after I'm dead, so if I am to achieve these things I must try to bring them about – and encourage other people to bring them about – on earth, in a republic in which we are all free and equal – and responsible – citizens.

Now, what does this involve? It involves all the best qualities of things. We mustn't shut anything out. If the Church has told us, for example, that forgiving our enemies is good, and if that seems to be a good thing to do, we must do it. If, on the other hand, those who struggled against the Church have shown us that free enquiry and unfettered scientific exploration is good – and I believe that they have – then we must hold this up as a good as well.

Whatever we can find that we feel to be good – and not just feel but can see with the accumulated wisdom that we have as we grow up, and read about history and learn from our own experiences and so on – wherever they come from, and whoever taught them in the first place, let's use them and do whatever we can do to make the world a little bit ~ Philip Pullman

In the world of the Bible, one's identity and one's vocation are all bound up in who one's father is. Men are called "son of" all of their lives (for instance, "the sons of Zebedee" or "Joshua, the son of Nun"). There are no guidance counselors in ancient Canaan or first-century Capernaum, helping "teenagers" decide what they want "to be" when they "grow up." A young man watches his father, learns from him, and follows in his vocational steps. This is why "the sons of Zebedee" are right there with their father when Jesus finds them, "in their boat mending the nets" (Mark 1:19-20).
The inheritance was the engine of survival, passed from father to son, an economic pact between generations. To lose one's inheritance was to pilfer for survival, to become someone's slave. ~ Russell D. Moore

My greatest environments in which I can grow, or grow up, is in personal romantic relationships with a man. ~ Alanis Morissette

I've never had siblings, I didn't grow up in a big family; it was just me and my single mom. And hectic family dysfunction was actually something that I craved. ~ Emmy Rossum

When we strive to remove all risk from childhood we also remove the foundations of a rational adulthood, and we eliminate the very experiences that will help kids grow up to be the empowered, creative, brave problem-solvers that they can and must be. ~ Gever Tulley

What cooler way to grow up for an American boy than to be around cars and football? ~ William Clay Ford, Jr.

If you're able to grow up in Nigeria and go through certain things, you're able to tackle anything around the world because you're able to live wherever, if you can survive in a city like Lagos or Warri or Niger Delta, as far as I'm concerned. ~ Nneka

With social media, with Instagram and selfies and all these apps that are trying to make you look perfect ... it's hard for girls to grow up nowadays with all that stuff. ~ Meghan Trainor

I'm sick of the whole notion of the enduring female. GROW UP! 'Cause while you're going through your fifth puberty, the world is falling apart and I can't handle it! (Barbara Weston) ~ Tracy Letts

You know, you grow up with the image of John Travolta being super cool - 'Saturday Night Fever,' Brian De Palma, handsome young god ... he, in reality, is a very silly man. And I mean that in a good way. He'll walk around the set talking in little weird voices, making people laugh. ~ Eric Stoltz

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing. ~ Eric Hoffer

Women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps ... they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit. ~ Betty Friedan

I did not grow up a cinefile. No one in my family was in the film business or even anything close to it. ~ J. C. Chandor

Grow up. This is real. The world is ugly and nasty and fucked up, and so are we. ~ Leah Raeder

What I didn't know until right this very minute was how growing up happens in little surges. We grow up in moments - when we encounter such stupidities in ourselves that our only choice is to grow past them or into them. Maybe that's why some kids grow up too fast and others not at all. ~ Natalie C. Parker

In the matchless gift of His Son, God has encircled the whole world with an atmosphere of grace as real as the air which circulates around the globe. All who chose to breathe this life-giving atmosphere will live and grow up to the stature of men and women in Christ Jesus. ~ Ellen G. White

Having been born and raised in Washington, D.C., you kind of absorb politics when you grow up. And it continues to be a focus of mine, probably more than what is healthy for me. ~ Jeffrey Wright

I also came across the word neoteny, which means "remaining young." It's something which we as humans have developed into a survival trait. Other animals, when they are young, have a curiosity about the world, a flexibility of response, and an ability to play which they lose as they grow up. As a species we have retained it. As a species, we are forever sticking our fingers into the electric socket of the universe to see what will happen next. It is a trait that will either save us or kill us, but it is what makes us human beings. I would rather be in the company of people who look at Mars than people who contemplate humanity's navel - other worlds are better than fluff. ~ Anonymous

Disappointment came to me, and booted me, and bruised and hurt me, but that's how people grow up. ~ Steven Morrissey

During my 20's and 30's at some point I started to think, "I have to give it up and I have to grow up." But the truth is that I can never give it up and that's another thing that I always tell people, especially young people: don't even bother thinking that you're going to give up whatever your art or your creative thing is. It's always there for you. ~ Alice Bag

It was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be. ~ Jodi Picoult

Thousands of years of human history have shown that the ideal setting for children to grow up is with a mother and a father committed to one another, living together, and sharing the responsibility of raising their children. ~ Marco Rubio

Dreams change," I told her. "They have to. Stretch with our bones as we grow up. No shame in ending up on a different path than you started down on. ~ Carlie St. George

Although it might seem paradoxical, growing up in a family of liberal-minded atheists, committed but never militant, tends to have devastating consequences. Being raised without a rigid backdrop of religious, political, or spiritual beliefs makes it hard to have a real crises later in life. There is no way forward if your point of departure is the comfortable passivity of someone who has been a self-professed agnostic since the age of twelve, without ever having considered those important - one might say grave - matters, such as God, death, love, failure, or fear. For a precocious agnostic, the virtues offered by skepticism become terrifying hands that strangle and suffocate the already rare capacity of an individual to question things. Conversely, intelligent people who grow up thinking one thing and, on reaching a certain age, realize that everything they believe is open to doubt - stark, brutal doubt - can truly enjoy a profound crises that, in the worst cases, leads them to know themselves a little better. ~ Valeria Luiselli

I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director. ~ David Gordon Green

You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it's impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can't compete with them and get a decent job, we're trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again. This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too. ~ Malcolm X

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. ~ Paul Kearney

When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls. ~ Kathryn Lasky

As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen. ~ Patti Smith

And just like that, I became my mother. We all do, if only for a moment at a time. That person we never think we will be like when we grow up is the person we see in our own reflection. How did that happen so fast? ~ Soleil Moon Frye

I grew up in such a melting pot. There's more ethnicities in Queens than there is in any place on the planet. So you grow up knowing things about other cultures. ~ Action Bronson

When I was little, everyone had always told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, but they'd forgotten to tell me two very important things: 1. how to grow up, and 2. How to figure out what the hell I wanted once I'd done that. ~ Seth King

For years now, I have waited to grow up. The truth, that I've learned, is that age has no reality except in the physical world. Our essence, of being human, is resistant to the passage of time. Our core and inner selves can remain eternal. Which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we thought we were in full bloom. As for me, I'm still quite a child inside.. ~ Jose N Harris

Well, but it's criminal negligence, really. These kids have to grow up and run things. Larger things than a ball field, I mean. What kind of world will they really be able to make? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I grew up going to school and high school and then shooting a movie for a few months. It's an odd way to grow up and is kind of forced maturity. ~ Logan Lerman

Sometimes, with autobiographies, it turns into a bit of score-settling. And looking back, I don't feel the way I did then, and you kind of grow up and let it go behind you. ~ Marc Almond

Oh, Daddy, I don't know what's wrong. I've tried to grow up - to be a good little girl, as you would say, but everywhere I turn I seem to walk deeper and deeper into some terrible despair. What's wrong, Daddy? What's wrong? Why is happiness such a precious thing? What have we done with our lives so that everywhere we turn - no matter how hard we try not to - we cause other people sorrow? ~ William Styron

I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool which seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.
It was just where I went. ~ Robert Penn Warren

I tell my daughter Nyssa, 'You should respect my work, and I will also respect yours when you grow up.' 'Work is worship' is what I have told her. ~ Kajol

Growing up in a home where children continually witness abuse and violence will leave them living every day feeling anxious and depressed, and they will suffer from physical and emotioinal problems throughout their childhood. But worst of all, they will be highly likely to grow up to raise children of their own who will continue the tragic cycle of family violence. (Taken from the tc book BLOOD HIGHWAY) ~ Shelia Johnson

Mom: A doctor, Lily? AND your own business? I want to be you when I grow up. ~ Colleen Hoover