Grown Up World Quotes

All children ... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world. ~ Thomas M. Disch

When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admired in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children. ~ Leontine R. Young

I don't get it," Tengo said. "You'd think they'd take special care of a kid with asthma, not bully her." "It's never that simple in the kids' world," she said with a sigh. "Kids get shut out just for being different from everyone else. The same kind of thing goes on in the grown-up world, but it's much more direct in the children's world. ~ Haruki Murakami

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. ~ Shirley Hazzard

Although the sufferings of children are the worst, being inextinguishable
children themselves seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. [p. 13] ~ Shirley Hazzard

Let us listen to the needs of our inner child that is being tamed and imprisoned by the rules of a grown-up world. ("Going back to yesterday" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up? ~ Dodie Smith

Thinking that the world was like an orange, that I could split it open with my thumbnail and find a whole different world, the grown-up world, the secrets beneath the skin. ~ Jennifer Weiner

Life begins at six
at least in the minds of six-year-olds ... In kindergarten you are the baby. In first grade you put down the baby ... Every first grader knows in some osmotic way that this is real life ... First grade is the first step on the way to a place in the grown-up world. ~ Stella Chess

Even in this world of course it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up. ~ C.S. Lewis

In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envisioned knights in shining armor and happily ever after scenes to escape from rules or boredom or pain; including a vision of my mother walking through our front door whole and well again. Now I knew that a lifetime of escape led to a life like Aunt Bertie's. My imagination was a gift, but I had to live in the real world. My eyes had been opened this summer to poverty and crime and abuse and I needed to use my imagination not to escape, but to help people like Irina and Katya, to make my own contribution as the women in the women's pavilion had done. I couldn't do it in the same way Jane Adams and my grandmother and Aunt Mat were, but I would find my own way and my own time. ~ Lynn Austin

I had a prodigious life, living in a grown-up world when I was a child. But I think my abilities were about perceptiveness, and they were about examining psychology and examining people and relationships. ~ Jodie Foster

It would be easy for this conflict to slip off the political agenda given how long it has been going on but for the sake of the people of Nepal for whom it is a daily tragic reality, the world must remain engaged and keep up the pressure on the government and the Maoists. ~ Irene Khan

Up to a point a person's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow. ~ Louis L'Amour

Office Peone looked at John and wondered what mental illness he had. The Seattle streets were filled with the mostly-crazy, half-crazy, nearly crazy, and soon-to-be crazy. Indian, white, Chicano, Asian, men, women, children. The social workers did not have anywhere near enough money, training, or time to help them. The city government hated the crazies because they were a threat to the public image of the urban core. Private citizens ignored them at all times of the year except the few charitable days leading up to and following Christmas. In the end, the police had to do most of the work. Police did crisis counseling, transporting them howling to detox, the dangerous to jail, racing the sick to the hospitals, to a safer place. At the academy, Officer Peone figured he would be fighting bad guys. He did not imagine he would spend most of his time taking care of the refuse of the world. Peone found it easier when the refuse were all nuts or dumb-ass drunks, harder when they were just regular folks struggling to find their way off the streets. ~ Sherman Alexie

The food doesn't matter. No, up here, in the room. It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France - as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. The world could go up on flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He even began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune. ~ Patrick Suskind

At any given moment, millions of systems are at work all around us. The blood pumping through our veins. The planets. The food chain. They're all super-specific systems linked to one another. Some of the systems occur organically as a greater part of the universe, like surprises and sunsets. But others are just made-up. Like, why is the school day eight hours long? And why is it that, even though I'm the smartest person in the world, I can't vote? The arbitrariness of it all is the thing that drives me nuts. ~ Gabby Rivera

(I have to say that everything seems to be unraveling lately. Or maybe it seems as though I am a flower myself, opening up to the world for the first time. I don't know why this is, and I'm not really in control of it either. Flowers do not think, Okay, it is now May, so I will reach up toward the sun and relax my fist of petals into an open hand. They do not think at all. Flowers just grow, and when it is time, they shoot colors out of their stems and become beautiful. ~ Matthew Quick

There is tragedy all around us, we pick up pieces, we find our feet and before long another turn of events stare us in the eyes; like we're some kind of magician- the fight seems endless, so I look to the world for inspiration. I observe and I watch how others face adversity, some hide from it, some master each lesson and some create a life with it ... Our lessons don't define us, our integrity to keep rising after every fall is. ~ Nikki Rowe

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as
the image of my father, whose life
was spent like this,
thinking of death, to the exclusion
of other sensual matters,
so in the end that life
was easy to give up, since
it contained nothing: even
my mother's voice couldn't make him
change or turn back
as he believed
that once you can't love another human being
you have no place in the world. ~ Louise Gluck

She didn't see what she didn't want to see. The women on the street were pretty girls waiting for a date and she was a princess waiting for her prince. The world could be a lot easier to deal with if you lived mostly inside your own head. Probably all the same ugly, sick, twisted stuff went on behind the pretty fences of her childhood anyway.She had built herself a fairly impressive wall in the last two years, but then she had been building that long before she got to the Cross. She could watch the world shit itself up right in front of her and not feel a thing. Sometimes she thought that any feeling at all would have been a luxury, but nothing got through. It meant that nothing could hurt her but it also meant that nothing could move her either. It was a price she was willing to pay. It was one interesting fucking trade-off. ~ Nicole Trope

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. ~ Mitt Romney

Growing old is unavoidable, but never growing up is possible. I believe you can retain certain things from your childhood if you protect them - certain traits, certain places where you don't let the world go. ~ Johnny Depp

God warned Israel, "And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it" (Ex. 20:25). To pollute something is to make it ordinary. God insists that any approach crafted by human ingenuity will produce a worship system just like all the pagan systems in the world. In other words, it will be common or profane - just like everyone else's paganism. ~ Max Anders

Rejoice, Micayon. Yours is a prophet's dream. The Great Nostalgia has made your world too small, and made you a stranger in that world. It has unloosed your imagination from the grip of
the despotic senses; and imagination has brought you forth your Faith.
And Faith shall lift you high above the stagnant, stifling world and carry you across the dreary emptiness and up the Rugged Mountains where every faith must needs be tried and purified of
the last dregs of Doubt.

And Faith so purified and triumphant shall lead you to the boundaries of the eternally green summit and there deliver you into the hands of Understanding.

Having discharged its task, Faith shall retire, and Understanding shall guide your steps to the unutterable Freedom of the
Summit which is the true, the boundless, and all-including home of God and the Overcoming
Man. ~ Mikhail Naimy

Dr. Parker and all my parents live in a paper-mache world. They just patch up problems with strips of newspaper and a little glue. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The world is full of people who write poorly but passionately, and others who can put a sentence together but have no feeling behind it. All they have in common is that they don't give up when people say they're talentless hacks. And both of those types of writers have audiences. ~ Kameron Hurley

Some people do need to grow up, but I don't think I'm there yet. I don't think I'm ready to do grown-up things and be a grown-up. ~ Kay Panabaker

I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect. ~ Nicole Krauss

Thanks for getting me out of there," I murmur, lacing my fingers around my knees, and looking up at him on his step.
"Yeah. You looked a little green. "
"I don't handle crowds too well. I've always been that way, I guess."
"You might get in trouble," he warns, staring at me in that strange, hungry way that unravels me. He strokes his bottom lip with a finger. For a flash of a second, his eyes look strange. Different. All glowing irises and thin dark pupils. Almost drake-like. I blink to clear my vision. His eyes are normal again. Just my imagination in overdrive. I'm probably projecting missing home and Az - everything--onto him. "Pep rallies are mandatory," he continues. "A lot of people saw you leave. Teachers included."
"They saw you leave, too," I point out.
He leans to the side, propping an elbow on one of the steps behind him. "I'm not worried about that. I've been in trouble before." He smiles a crooked grin and holds up crossed fingers. "The principal and I are like this. The guy loves me. Really."
Laughter spills from me, rusty and hoarse.
His grin makes me feel good. Free. Like I'm not running from anything. Like I could stay here in this world, if only I have him.
The thought unsettles me. Sinks heavily in my chest. Because I can't have him. Not really. All he can ever be for me is a temporary fix.
"But you're worried I'll get in trouble?" I try not to show how much this pleases me. I've managed to ignore him for days n ~ Sophie Jordan

I think our generation has been called to apathy just as our grandparents were called to defeat fascism and the baby boomers were called to get divorced and fuck around for most of their adult lives before bankrupting the entire goddamn country when they retire. But we have the chance to do something really special here. Imagine a world where people didn't care enough to go to war over anything. Where some guy gets up in the morning and says, "I know God wants me to kill the infidels and keep gay people from marrying each other, but I just don't give a shit. I'm going back to bed." It would be paradise on earth. This is our mission. I think we can make it happen, but I really don't care either way. And that's called hope. ~ Paul Neilan

Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

What's your name again?"
"Peter. Peter Granford."
Lewis opened up his mouth to speak, but then just shook his head.
"What?" The boy ducked his head. "You just, uh, looked like you were going to say something
important."
Lewis looked at this namesake, at the way he stood with his shoulders rounded, as if he did not
deserve so much space in this world. He felt that familiar pain that fell like a hammer on his
breastbone whenever he thought of Peter, of a life that would be lost to prison. He wished he'd
taken more time to look at Peter when Peter was right in front of his eyes, because now he would be
forced to compensate with imperfect memories or-even worse-to find his son in the faces of
strangers.
Lewis reached deep inside and unraveled the smile that he saved for moments like this, when there
was absolutely nothing to be happy about. "It was important," he said. "You remind me of someone
I used to know. ~ Jodi Picoult

I play a character called Lieutenant Delcourt who, in the original comics, pops up from time to time to rescue Tintin. I guess if you've grown up watching movies like 'Jaws' and 'Indiana Jones,' it's pretty surreal to find yourself on set with Steven Spielberg directing you. ~ Tony Curran

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment ...
What a soft thoughtful time.
In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. ~ Vera Nazarian

When you live your life doing the things that turn you on, that you're good at, that bring you joy, that make you shove stuff in people's faces and scream, "check this out!!!" you walk around so lit up that you shoot sunbeams out of yer eyeballs. Which automatically lights up the world around you. Which is precisely why you are here: to shine your big-ass ball of fire onto this world of ours. A world that literally depends upon light to survive. You ~ Jen Sincero

There is not a moment but preys upon you, - and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It's a hell of a thing, taking away a man's voice.
Dr. Ren had said this to me on the night Harrison Paine woke up. That was all he'd said about the man, then or since, that hadn't been purely clinical, but I knew it weighed on him. I'd worked with him long enough to learn that he felt personal failure any time he couldn't save the world.
Maybe that was part of the reason I found myself gravitating to Harrison Paine's room. I couldn't give the singer his voice back, but maybe if I worked hard enough, I could relieve some of the pressure Dr. Ren felt. Maybe if I worked hard enough, I could make Harrison give me one of his rare, beautiful smiles ~ Peter Styles

I believe it " announced Tafe complacently.
"That my dear " said Ambrose "is because you grew up in a rough and violent world here just managing to live from day to day is easily considered a miracle. You are able to accept the truth no matter how astonishing its guise. Whereas our friend Hocker here is steeped in the overweening rationalism of his time and could mentally dismiss a mastodon in front of him if it happened to be wearing the wrong school tie. ~ K.W. Jeter

The shirt was a screen print of a famous Surrealist artwork by René Magritte in which he drew a pipe and then beneath it wrote in cursive Ceci n'est pas une pipe. ("This is not a pipe.")

"I just don't get that shirt," Mom said.

"Peter Van Houten will get it, trust me.

There are like seven thousand Magritte references in An Imperial Affliction."

"But it is a pipe."

"No, it's not," I said. "It's a drawing of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It's very clever."

"How did you get so grown up that you understand things that confuse your ancient mother?" Mom asked. "It seems like just yes-terday that I was telling seven-year-old Hazel why the sky was blue. You thought I was a genius back then."

"Why is the sky blue?" I asked.

"Cuz," she answered. I laughed. ~ John Green

There is no easy way to do a deadlift - not involving actually picking up the bar - which explains their lack of popularity in gyms around the world. ~ Mark Rippetoe

It was ironic because we would be tested tonight. Our foundation would be shaken, and for a minute, I would forget who we were. Someone would offer up temptation, a whisper of doubt, but it wouldn't come in the form of an apple. No, it would come in the form of something much worse. For the first time ever, I would doubt Phillipe, and with the doubt tricking through my veins, I would feel like I had nothing else in the world. For that moment in time, I would feel completely alone. ~ Ella Frank

Everyone says that loves hurts, but that's not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Everyone confuse these things with love but reality, love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again. ~ Anonymous

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. ~ Alan W. Watts

Today, the reason we haven't found our grail, the key to who we are as women, is because we look for it in worlds of false power, the very worlds that took it away from us in the first place. Neither men nor work can restore our lost scepter. Nothing in this world can take us home. Only the radar in our hearts can do that, and when it does, ... 'We will light up like lamps, and the world will never be the same again.' ~ Marianne Williamson

There, Clover found the "gardens and great trees and old cottages ... so beautiful" that seeing them exhausted her. It was as if, she joked with her husband, "this English world is a huge stage-play got up only to amuse Americans. It is obviously unreal, eccentric, and taken out of novels. ~ Natalie Dykstra

Everyone used to seem so grown up," I say. "Nobody does anymore. Look at us. Forty, fifty years ago we would have been our parents. Who are we now?" ...

"They passed," Leonard says, "that's all." Fifty years ago you entered a closet marked 'marriage.' In the closet was a double set of clothes, so stiff they could stand up by themselves. A woman stepped into a dress called 'wife' and the man stepped into a suit called 'husband.' And that was it. They disappeared inside the clothes. Today, we don't pass. We're standing here naked. That's all."

He strikes a match and holds it to his cigarette.

"I'm not the right person for this life," I say.

"Who is?" he says, exhaling in my direction. ~ Vivian Gornick

Maybe it's not a lesson so much as it's a magic trick. You can make a little girl into anything if you say the right words. Take her apart until all that's left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. Stitch her up again real good. Now, maybe you get a woman. If you're lucky. If that's what you were after. Just as easy to end up with a blackbird or a circus bear or a coyote. Or a parrot, just saying what's said to you, doing what's done to you, copying until it comes so natural that even when you're all alone you keep on cawing hello pretty bird at the dark. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world, while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you. ~ Caroline Myss

No one could see her out here, no one could judge her. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the animal that she was trapped inside, that grew and fed and wanted. She wished above all else to look ordinary so that people's eyes just slid over her. Because Mum was wrong. It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world. Clouds scrolled high up. She couldn't get Melissa out of her head. Something magnetic about her, the possibility of a softness inside, the challenge of peeling back those layers. ~ Mark Haddon

People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability of suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror, and nothing but horror. ~ Milan Kundera

In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, "What do you do?" I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now my answer to "What do you do?" is, "How much time do you have?" Most of us have complicated answers to this question. For example, I'm a mom, partner, researcher, writer, storyteller, sister, friend, daughter, and teacher. All of these things make up who I am, so I never know how to answer that question. ~ Brene Brown

Up there, comrades," he would say solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak– "up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that you can see– there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!" He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else? ~ George Orwell

We both have a lot of growing-up to do ... A lot of the world to see & figure out on our own.
Leo ~ Emily Giffin

Set foot in his classroom, and you'll see that he hasn't quite given up on these dreams. True to his compulsive nature and eclectic taste, he punctuates his courses with entertaining routines to keep his students engaged, playing four songs at the start of each class and tossing candy bars to the first students who shout out the correct answers to music trivia. This is how a poster of a rapper ended up on his wall. "If you want to engage your audience, if you really want to grab their attention, you have to know the world they live in, the music they listen to, the movies they watch," he explains. "To most of these kids, accounting is like a root canal. But when they hear me quote Usher or Cee Lo Green, they say to themselves, 'Whoa, did that fat old white-haired guy just say what I thought he said?' And then you've got 'em. ~ Adam M. Grant

We chased her across the Pont-Neuf and through the Bois de Boulogne, kicking up leaves, and one day we knew that no matter where we might find ourselves in the world, Paris would be an ache in our hearts. Yes, we were young students in Paris. We had gone there because we knew it was the city of love and learning and light. Where it would lead was not as important as where we were at the moment. Looking at the city, we thought we saw our whole lives. Perhaps we did. ~ Karen Schur

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards. ~ Alan Cumming