Grown Ups Quotes

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics. ~ A. N. Wilson

You know, it's just politics, it's a game grown-ups like to play, like we lil' children play with toys. ~ Sharon Maas

Merlin: "Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free of this?"
Arthur: "Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents."
Merlin: "You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not.
Our readers of that time ( ... ) have exactly three ideas in their magnificent noodles. The first is that the human species is superior to others. The second, that the twentieth century is superior to other centuries. And the third, that human adults of the twentieth century are superior to their young. ( ... ) ~ T.H. White

When one speaks of solitaries, one always takes too much for granted. One supposes that people know what one is talking about. No, they do not. They have never seen a solitary, they have simply hated him without knowing him. They have been his neighbors who used him up, and the voices in the next room that tempted him. They have incited things against him, so that they made a great noise and drowned him out. Children were in league against him, when he was tender and a child, and with every growth he grew up against the grown-ups. They tracked him to his hiding place, like a beast to be hunted, and his long youth had no closed season. And when he refused to be worn out and got away, they cried out upon that which emanated from him, and called it ugly and cast suspicion upon it. And when he would not listen, they became more distinct and ate away his food and breathed out his air and spat into his poverty so that it became repugnant to him. They brought down disrepute upon him as upon an infectious person and cast stones at him to make him go away more quickly. And they were right in their ancient instinct: for he was indeed their foe.

But then, when he did not raise his eyes, they began to reflect. They suspected that with all this they had done what he wanted; that they had fortified him in his solitude and helped him to separate himself from them for ever. And now they changed about and, resorting to the final, the extreme, used that other resistance: fame. And a ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Childermass knew what games the children on street-corners are playing - games that all other grown-ups have long since forgotten. Childermass knew what old people by firesides are thinking of, though no one has asked them in years. Childermass knew what young men hear in the rattling of the drums and the tooting of the pipes that makes them leave their homes and go to be soldiers - and he knew the half-eggcupful of glory and the barrelful of misery that await them. And all that Childermass knew made him smile; and some of what he knew made him laugh out loud; and none of what he knew wrung from him so much as ha'pennyworth of pity. ~ Susanna Clarke

Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting. ~ Neil Gaiman

I'm not raising the children-I'm raising the grown-ups that they're going to be. ~ Louis C.K.

Other grown-ups, especially women, had learned somehow to live on the surfaces of their bodies, controlling them and presenting a prepared version of them to the world ~ Tessa Hadley

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

And modern houses don't have passages, either, for children to play and run about in, and for dogs, umbrellas, coats and satchels. And don't forget that passages and corridors are where the young ones curl up and go to sleep when they're tired, and where you go and collect them to put them to bed. That's where they go when they're four years old and have had enough of the grown-ups and their philosophy. That's where, when they're unsure of themselves, they go and have a quiet cry.

Houses never have enough room for children, not even if they're castles. Children don't actually look at houses, but they know them and all their nooks and crannies better than their mothers do. They rummage about. They snoop around. They don't consciously look at houses any more than they look at the walls of flesh that enclose them before they can see anything at all - but they know them. It's when they leave the house that they look at it. ~ Marguerite Duras

They'd have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they'd been scared silly that they might find that child dead. ~ Jenny Wingfield

Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure. ~ Jonathan Kozol

What about our human rights,' demanded Carl, who'd gathered a small deputation of kids within minutes. 'There is a WAR ON,' said Crewman Devlin, shortly. I wondered if this meant grown-ups actually listen to you when there wasn't a war on, because somehow I was sceptical. ~ Sophia McDougall

Children know so little, they must learn quickly to imitate grown-ups whenever they feel unsure in a situation. ~ Francesca Marciano

Isabelle had always thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child, when the grown-ups were having conversations and she was expected to listen politely-- and even, although she hated to admit this, later with Edward, her husband, when listening to the particularities of his carpet salesmanship wore her thin. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories.

Of course, her mental garden hadn't always been well tended. There were the years when the children were young, fast-moving periods when life flew by without time for the roots of deep reflection, and yet she knew memories were created whether one pondered them or not. She had always considered that one of the luxuries of growing older would be the chance to wander through the garden that had grown while she wasn't looking. She would sit on a bench and let her mind take every path, tend every moment she hadn't paid attention to, appreciate the juxtaposition of the one memory against another. ~ Erica Bauermeister

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don't like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it's vapid, so they'll go for the hard words, they'll go for the hard concepts, they'll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things. ~ Maurice Sendak

I never used to see August the way other people saw him. I knew he didn't look exactly normal, but I really didn't understand why strangers seemed so shocked when they saw him. Horrified. Sickened. Scared. There are so many words I can use to describe the looks on people's faces. And for a long time I didn't get it. I'd just get mad. Mad when they stared. Mad when they looked away. "What the heck are you looking at?" I'd say to people - even grown-ups. Then, when I was about eleven, I went to stay with Grans in Montauk for four weeks while August was having ~ R.J. Palacio

I felt cheated by the way grown-ups told me that the future of the world was bleak when I became a teenager in the 1970s. The pollution explosion was unstoppable. Global famine was inevitable. I genuinely want the next generation, my own kids, to know that actually it's possible that the future might be better than the past. ~ Matt Ridley

You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time. ~ Kingsley Amis

Aunt Emily says grown-ups never really like playing. They do it to please us."

"They little know," Gerald answered, "how often we do it to please them. ~ E. Nesbit

Couples stray," said Edgar. "Part of the breaking-in process."
"Not breaking in, breaking." Nicola differed sharply. "You can glue people together again. But then your relationship's like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It's never the same. I can see you haven't a notion what I'm on about, so you'll have to take my word for it."
"Christ, you're a babe in the woods." Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. "You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe - bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love's gonna last it if can't take abuse. ~ Lionel Shriver

Truly in the short term, there tends to be no consequences to our act of irresponsibility. However in the long run most of those kids we refused to pay attention to are now grown ups and are the fearful nocturnal visitors with weapons attacking the same neighbourhood, raping our daughters and wives, maiming our sons and husbands, turning our lives into a nightmare. Our response? Another blame game. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Philosophy is the education of grown-ups. ~ Stanley Cavell

The grown-ups, or maybe I should say the parents, ate in the dining room. ~ Ann Darby

He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn't even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he'd carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day she was gone, replaced by a foreigner, an uncooperative woman he didn't know how to speak to. Being so confused, so weak, so in love, he chose strength and drove her away from himself. The last years he spent wondering where she'd gone, and slowly came to realise that she would never return, and that the husband he'd chosen for her was an idiot. ~ Hanif Kureishi

Because we're grown-ups now, and its our turn to decide what that means. ~ XKCD

These educated parents subjected the poor five-year old girl to every possible torture. They beat her, flogged her, kicked her, not knowing why themselves, until her whole body was nothing but bruises; finally they attained the height of finesse: in the freezing cold, they locked her all night in the outhouse, because she wouldn't ask to get up and go in the middle of the night (as if a five-year-old child sleeping its sound angelic sleep could have learned to ask by that age)--for that they smeared her face with her excrement and made her eat the excrement, and it was her mother, her mother who made her! And this mother could sleep while her poor little child was moaning all night in that vile place! Can you understand that a small creature, who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her, in a vile place, in the dark and the cold, beats herself on her strained little chest with her tiny fist and weeps with her anguished, gentle, meek tears for 'dear God' to protect her--can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to 'dear God.' I'm not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony. ~ Ron Koertge

For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Maybe that's what grown-ups did. They kissed your breasts and then pretended it meant nothing. And if they could pretend really well, it meant they were really grown-up.
Or maybe they kissed your breasts and it really was nothing.
How was that possible? To touch another human being that way and have it mean nothing?
But maybe if you could do that, it meant you were really grown-up. ~ Paullina Simons

My work in books, films and talks lies almost wholly with children, and I have very little time to give to grown-ups. ~ Enid Blyton

You grown-ups are making too much noise! Go play Outside for awhile. February ~ Jack Lewis

Will, was not as taken with the photo of the new baby as the grown ups around him. "It look like Mr. Potato Head." "I'm sure your baby sister will appreciate that," Alessandro said with a wry grin. "A girl? It's a girl?" Will asked with a grimace. "That's right," Bree announced as Vanessa and Brian congratulated them. "I can play wif Gianni but what we gonna do wif a girl?" he asked, handing the picture back to them. "Nope, send it back
and get another boy dis time. ~ E. Jamie

If our kids only expect blessings and exemptions, they will be terrible grown-ups. ~ Jen Hatmaker

Children - even when they have endured the unthinkable - have a gift for divining the moment when the grown-ups really need to lighten up. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Welcome to the world of grown-ups. You might be good at math, and somebody pays for tht, but what you really love to do is sing. Do you think Oscar prizes above all else his ability to book guests into a hotel?.. The sad fact of the world ... is almost nobody exactly chooses what they get paid to do.
Peggy to James ~ Elizabeth McCracken

LEARNING LOVE If our parents didn't love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? There aren't courses or classes in love. If the grown-ups know how to take care of each other, then the children who grow up in this environment will naturally know how to love, understand, and bring happiness to others. The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

What brought us to heel morally far more effectively than talk of Right and Wrong was the word that had such remarkable potency in our family: silly. It was the word most often used by grown-ups when they were scolding, and it worked so well because while "naughty" or "bad" added drama to a situation, and even hinted at forces which might be beyond your control, "silly" was something you could easily be (very likely had been, in whatever was the case in point); and silliness was, or you felt it ought to be, within your control. It was a maddening, snubbing little word, and you often raged against it, but in the end it contributed a great deal to giving us the idea that people are responsible for their own actions, and ought to be prepared to accept their consequences. Far more than God, up there in His marvellous world of all-embracing love, and of magic, it belonged to the world we understood. ~ Diana Athill

Everyone things children are sweet as Necco Wafers, but I've lived long enough to know the truth: kids are rotten. The only difference between grown-ups and kids is that grown-ups go to jail for murder. Kids get away with it. ~ Jennifer L. Holm

By doing that and being very competitive, the grown-ups started telling me even back before I started playing organized ball that I was too physical and too advanced for the kids my own age. ~ Bo Jackson

For me adulthood is realising that there are no grown-ups and everyone else is winging it, ~ Sarah Beeny

Grown-ups love figures ... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

There are so many words I can use to describe the looks on people's faces. And for a long time I didn't get it. I'd just get mad. Mad when they stared. Mad when they looked away. "What the heck are you looking at?" I'd say to people - even grown-ups. ~ R.J. Palacio

Grown-ups are an untrustworthy, treacherous lot, they don't take their games in the serious wholehearted way children do, and yet they too have their own games, one more serious than the other, one game inside another, so that it's impossible to discover what the real one is. ~ Italo Calvino

Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. ~ Michael Ende

Xmas all grown ups sa is the season for the kiddies but this do not prevent them from taking a tot or 2 from the bot and having, it may seme, a better time than us. For children in fact Xmas is often a bit of a strane wot with pretending that everything is a surprise. Above all father xmas is a strane. You canot so much as mention that there is no father xmas when some grown-up sa Hush not in front of wee tim. So far as i am concerned if father xmas use langwage like that when he tripped over the bolster last time we had beter get a replacement. ~ Geoffrey Willans

When I was younger, I'd wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child's wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn't promise, not and mean it. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I am totally convinced that most grown-ups have completely forgotten what is it like to be a child between the ages of five and then ... I can remember exactly what it was like. I am certain I can. ~ Roald Dahl

Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held. ~ Anna Quindlen

I understand that it's disheartening to pour effort and money into a work of art and find that others do not value it with the same intensity. I've been to this rodeo more than a few times, and yes, it's painful and hard on the soul. It is also the sort of thing that grown-ups do every day. Anyone deluded enough to think they are owed monetary success because they bled for their art is in for some hard, hard knocks and buckets full of tears. There will be many cries of "unfair" and much jealousy and hatred. And to be fair, all authors go through this every time they watch their books ride the waves of bestseller charts and the ego torture chamber known as Goodreads reviews. Even the most well-adjusted of us watch that horrible piece of shit book beat our baby to pieces and gnash our teeth and shout at our monitors demanding to know what brain-donors are shopping on amazon.com these days.

But holy Smart Bitch on a cracker, Batman, to write a post about how stupid readers are and worse to actually put it out there on the internet is so beyond the pale there's a special hell for that kind of idiocy. Let me repeat: authors exist at the pleasure of readers. Without the people who buy and read my books, I am just another dizzy broad writing shit down. Readers aren't just an author's audience; they are her lifeblood.
-- ~ Heidi Cullinan

The kids all knew me from Wayne's World. The grown-ups knew me after True Lies. ~ Tia Carrere

That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Believe me, It would be better if we didn't meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you're still a child. ~ Anthony Horowitz

So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterward he became a man and married.

But that is a story for grown-ups. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Rosie hated her curly golden hair. When she was old enough to hold minimal conversations, the itsy-bitsy-cutesycoo sort of grown-ups would pull the soft ringlets gently and tell her what a pretty little girl she was. She would stare at this sort of grown-up and say, "I am not pretty. I am intelligent. And brave." The grown-ups usually thought this was darling, which only made her angry, perhaps partly because she was speaking the truth, although it was tricky to differentiate between "brave" and "foolhardy" at three or four years old. ~ Robin McKinley

It was important to look confident, he realized that very early on. After all, there was a terrible tendency among adults to look at children travelling alone as if they were planning a crime of some sort. None of them ever thought that it might just be a young chap on his way to see the world and have a great adventure. They were so small minded, grown-ups. That was one of their many problems. ~ John Boyne

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
I don't beg so much as command to differ. ~ Inga Muscio

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, I've seen you fighting like a boxer to change your face so that it never shows anything. Whoever told you that's what growing up means is a villain, as true as a mustache. I am growing up, too, and look at me! I cry and I blush and I live in Fairyland always! ~ Catherynne M Valente

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic ... ~ Cressida Cowell

As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. ~ C.S. Lewis

Jay became an adult. He got a job, married a wife, and they had a child. Now he had so many things to take care! Like all other grown ups, he talked more of being busy than of being happy. He completely forgot the little bird singing beautiful songs in his heart. ~ Ilchi Lee

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83) ~ Sheldon B. Kopp

I am Nom-O-Tron,' said the machine, in a big, boomy voice, so loud that Astra was afraid her mum and dad or some other grown-ups would hear and come to see who was sneaking a bedtime snack. 'Shhh!' she said. 'Have you got any biscuits? ~ Philip Reeve

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children. ~ Warren Buffett

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups. ~ Ada Calhoun

I'm one of those people who never really joined the grown-ups. ~ Richard O'Brien

Children killing children. That's a terrible thing."
"What do you think has gone wrong?"
"It's not just the children. It's the grown-ups too. Some people are growing children, not raising children, and there's a big difference."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, people grow hogs. You give them a place to live, give them all the food they need to keep growing, and make sure that they don't get sick on you. With children you got to raise them. Of course, you feed and clothe them. But a parent has to take the time to teach them right and wrong. A parent has to discipline them. And a parent got to be there to listen to them, help them with their problems. I think most people do their best, but there are some parents these days that are growing children, not raising children.
"It's a sad thing. These children have everything they need to grow up, but they are missing something inside. They must hurt awful bad and no one has shown them the way to live. Buying them their food or even fancy clothes or a car ain't going to help if a child is hurting inside. We all need the same things. ~ George Dawson

All our learned schoolmasters and tutors are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want. But no one likes to think - blindingly obvious though it is, in my view - that grown-ups too, like children, totter around on the earth and, like the children, do not know where they have come from or where they are going, act no more than children do for any true purpose and are just as governed by biscuits, cakes, and the rod. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

God is Santa Claus for Grown-Ups. ~ Oliver Markus

I am merciful,' exclaimed Glokta, waving his hand airily, as the ambassador himself had done but a few short minutes before, 'but my mercy has limits. Speak.'

'I am here under a flag of parley, on a mission from the Emperor himself! To harm an unarmed emissary would be expressly against the rules of war!'

'Parley? Rules of war?' Glokta chuckled. Severard chuckled. Vitari chuckled. Frost was silent. 'Do they even have those any more? Save that rubbish for children like Vissbruck, that's not the way grown-ups play the game. Who is the traitor?'

'I pity you, cripple! When the city falls - '

Save your pity. You'll need it for yourself. Frost's fist scarcely made any sound as it sank into the ambassador's stomach. His eyes bulged out, his mouth hung open, he coughed a dry cough, somewhere close to vomiting, tried to breathe and coughed again.

'Strange, isn't it,' mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. 'Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you're the most powerful man in the world. The next you can't even breathe by yourself. Some kinds of power are nothing but tricks of the mind. Your people taught me that. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Even when I was a kid, I had a good thing with kids. To this day, if I go to a birthday party with one of my kids, I swear to you, I am so much happier hanging out with my kids and their friends than talking to the grown-ups. ~ Shawn Levy

Maybe there weren't any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for. ~ Neil Gaiman

So much of childhood amounts to being awake in a grown-up's nightmare. Ours happened to be about poverty, which comes with not just psychological dangers but mortal ones, too. ~ Sarah Smarsh

It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?) ~ John Irving

As you know, children (unlike grown-ups) are far too clever to be tricked by impostors - a fact that goes a long way toward explaining their distrust of wicked stepmothers and substitute teachers. ~ Jonathan Auxier

When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they'd told me NOT to do. Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They were all running around in mazes like everyone else. ~ Anne Lamott

When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

We say to our children, "Act like grown-ups," but Jesus said to the grown-ups, "Be like children. ~ Billy Graham

When grown-ups hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat - well, then they say they've got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks.
When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it.
She will lie down and inside her own heart like a bird in the night. ~ Jenni Fagan

As a child, I was an observer, a listener for the stories of grown-ups. I led a quiet, solitary life with my mother, interrupted in the evenings by the arrival of my father who preferred to live in a state of emergency. ~ Susan Shreve

Oh wow, you know what's wrong with all these families on TV? All these kids say stuff no kid would say. Stuff grown-ups want them to say. Man, I'd make a really realistic family. Where kids get spankings. On TV parents say, 'Oh, you shouldn't do that ever again. Now you can have ice cream.' Forget it. ~ Macaulay Culkin

Where are the stars on this dark, dark, night?
Where is there tiny twinkling light?
Where is the music?
Where is the song?
Where are the colors?
Something is wrong.

Sometimes stars hide in the clouds,
and their light seems far away.
Sometimes voices are hushed and still,
and the rainbow fades to gray.

Sometimes the world is topsy-turvy,
and nobody really knows why;
Sometimes sad things happen,
and even grown-ups cry.

But always, my child, always,
you are safe here in my arms.
The world may be topsy-turvy,
but I will shelter you from harm.

Always the stars are twinkling,
even when clouds hide their light.
I promise you voices will sing again,
and colors will again shine bright.

I promise there is always tomorrow
for starlight and rainbows and song;
My love will always surround you
unchanged, unbroken, and strong. ~ Ann E. Burg

The men in grey were powerless to meet this challenge head-on. Unable to detach the children from Momo by bringing them under their direct control, they had to find some roundabout means of achieving the same end, and for this they enlisted the children's elders. Not all grown-ups made suitable accomplices, of course, but plenty did. [....] 'Something must be done,' they said. 'More and more kids are being left on their own and neglected. You can't blame us - parents just don't have the time these days - so it's up to the authorities.' Others joined in the chorus. 'We can't have all these youngsters loafing around, ' declared some. 'They obstruct the traffic. Road accidents caused by children are on the increase, and road accidents cost money that could be put to better use.' 'Unsupervised children run wild, declared others.'They become morally depraved and take to crime. The authorities must take steps to round them up. They must build centers where the youngsters can be molded into useful and efficient members of society.' 'Children,' declared still others, 'are the raw material for the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing children from tomorrow's world, we still allow too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations.' The timesavers were all in favor of such a policy, naturall ~ Michael Ende, Momo

The Fraud Police are the imaginary, terrifying force of 'real' grown-ups who you believe - at some subconscious level - are going to come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, saying:
We've been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You stand accused of the crime of completely winging it, you are guilty of making shit up as you go along, you do not actually deserve your job, we are taking everything away and we are TELLING EVERYBODY. ~ Amanda Palmer

But Schaffa is a grown-up, and grown-ups need their sleep; that's what her father always said whenever she or Chaga did something that woke him up. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Red remembered growing up in that house as heaven. There were enough children on Bouton Road to form two baseball teams, when they felt like it, and they spent all their free time playing out of doors - boys and girls together, little ones and big ones. Suppers were brief, pesky interruptions foisted on them by their mothers. They disappeared again till they were called in for bed, and then they came protesting, all sweaty-faced and hot with grass blades sticking to them, begging for just another half hour. "I bet I can still name every kid on the block," Red would tell his own children. But that was not so impressive, because most of those kids had stayed on in the neighborhood as grown-ups, or at least come back to it later after trying out other, lesser places. Red ~ Anne Tyler

If you want to get out of a house without being seen, the middle of the afternoon is in some ways a better time to try it than the middle of the night. Doors and windows are more likely to be open; and if you are caught, you can always pretend you weren't meaning to go far and had no particular plans. (It is very hard to make either giants or grown-ups believe this if you're found climbing out of a bedroom window at one o'clock in the morning.) ~ C.S. Lewis

He was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland, that everytime you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them of vindictively as fast as possible. ~ J.M. Barrie

I think grown-ups don't go to movies because they're much more discerning. ~ Joseph Bologna

As a child, I was constantly being sent on playdates with other kids - the shrinks insisted I interact with cohorts. That's what my meeting with Lyle was like: those first loose, horrible ten minutes, when the grown-ups have left, and neither kid knows what the other one wants, so you stand there, near the TV they've told you to keep off, fiddling with the antenna. ~ Gillian Flynn

What's been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn't what they try to tell you. Time isn't. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you'll start believing it's something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there's nothing left; to stake you down so you won't lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face. ~ Tana French

The entire world of grown-ups is corrupt and stupid. ~ Matt Groening

Grown-ups, who are supposed to protect their children, are limited by what "best" has felt like to them, based on the circumstances they grew in and the privilege they did or did not have. The lines between grown-up and child were often blurred between me and my mom. Her "best" did not look like mine; in fact, it looked like danger. It felt like surrender. ~ Samra Habib

She thinks I'm a child who needs to be protected from the horrors of grown-ups, because she somehow forgets that the world of children has its own horrors. And that the world of teenagers holds the horrors of both. ~ Sam J. Miller

My earliest memory is dreamlike: in a small orchard or garden I am carried on the arm, I believe, of my father; there was a group of grown-ups, my mother among them, and the group was slowly walking in the orchard, it seems toward the house. ~ Immanuel Velikovsky

Well, you're grown-ups," she said, in a tone of voice that did its best to imply that they weren't, and that even if they were they shouldn't be. ~ Neil Gaiman

Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind. ~ C.S. Lewis

My children are grown-ups., so you and Noah are my only little boys I have left. ~ John Green

say: maybe not in these words; maybe not in words at all, but in the purer language of thought; but yes, certainly, this is what was at the bottom of it all; because children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison, and it was the poison of grown-ups which did for us. ~ Salman Rushdie