Grownup Quotes

I am. A child is helpless; I think it is the betrayal that destroys them. But a grownup is – usually – not helpless. Grownups expect betrayal. What they can't stand to be is powerless. That's what destroys them. ~ B.G. Harlen

A grownup is a child with layers on. ~ Woody Harrelson

Someday perhaps I'll have to get a grownup job ... but for now I'm having too much fun being a reporter. ~ Andrea Mitchell

Nathaniel kissed me and then Micah good-bye. Normally he would have kissed Micah more thoroughly, because he might not get another chance for hours, but we'd started doing less of the tonsil-cleaning kisses in front of Matthew - not just between the men, but between me and the men, or anyone and anyone. Why? Because Matthew liked to imitate, and he'd gotten sent home with a note from preschool. We'd been left having to explain that certain kinds of kissing was grownup kissing, and he had to be a grownup to do it. He'd accepted our reasoning and filed it away on the same list as driving a car, drinking liquor, or being able to lift weights. It made perfect sense to him that it was just one more thing he wasn't old enough to do, yet. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

When I was eleven, my mother gave me Robert K. Massie's 'Nicholas and Alexandra.' It was the first 'grownup' book I read, and I loved it. ~ Kathryn Harrison

And Mum was all 'don't you two look grownup' which obvs means 'omg slutbags' in the language of Parent. ~ Susie Day

How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one. ~ Leo Tolstoy

That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

All any grownup expects of an adolescent is that he act like an adult and be satisfied to be treated like a child. ~ John Grant

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

When you're young, you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it, in a sense, too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult ... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden, one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice. ~ Drew Barrymore

Today she had felt like a child forced to play grownup in a cavernous nineteenth-century house with someone else's furniture, someone else's past. Though not forced, she thought hastily. David had been scrupulously fair about that. It had been a joint decision. Except that David had thought of it, David had been the one enthused about it, and David had a way of leading you along on the ragged edge of his enthusiasm until you were someplace you hadn't planned to be, wondering how you got there. ~ William Gay

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left. ~ Peter S. Beagle

One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes. ~ Philip Pullman

Geography! That's something they teach in the third grade! I never heard of a grownup studying geography. ~ John Updike

Let's face it: part of being a grownup is that every day you have to choose between going out at night or staying home, and it is one of life's unhappy truths that there is not enough time to do both. ~ Nora Ephron

Embracing the fear of freedom, deciding to determine your own path, this is the work of a grownup. ~ Seth Godin

Negotiating small differences is part of being a grownup; no one can tell you in advance where to put your foot down. ~ Susan Neiman

Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation "political economy considers the proletarian only as a worker," who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him "in his leisure and humanity," this ruling-class perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from him. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. ~ Guy Debord

When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, "When did you start feeling like a grownup?" His response: "Never. ~ Shannon Celebi

I'm not too proud of the movies I made as a grownup except for 'That Hagen Girl', which nobody remembers but which gave me a chance to act. ~ Shirley Temple

Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo ... In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grownup babies are expected to hide their eyes. ~ Clive Bell

It's naive and even irresponsible for a grownup today to get her or his information about foreign policy and war and peace exclusively from the administration in power. It's essential to have other sources of information, to check those against one's own common sense, and to form your own judgment as to whether we ought to go to or persist in war. ~ Daniel Ellsberg

Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died. ~ Joss Whedon

For a grownup like me, To learn from her, What it takes to love, It comes naturally to her… ~ Piyush Rohankar

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old! ~ May Sarton

It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the magic of creativity. ~ Ellen Greene

Spirituality is a grownup yet growing relation to the Holy Spirit. ~ Charles C. Ryrie

Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright
They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose
They'd build a ship
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life.
They wouldn't quarrel
Or break my specs
Or talk about a beast
If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup ... a sign or something. ~ William Golding

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next. ~ Beverly Cleary

J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield is a literary descendant of Huck Finn: more educated and sophisticated, the son of affluent New Yorkers, but like Huck a youthful runaway from a world of adult hypocrisy, venality and, to use one of his own favourite words, phoniness. What particularly appals Holden is the eagerness of his peers to adopt that corrupt grownup behaviour. ~ David Lodge

When you're a child you never figure a grownup is going to be jealous of you. It's the grownups who seem to have everything. Children give adults far too much credit. ~ Polly Horvath

I have no sense of myself as a sex symbol at all. But the meaning of sex symbol might be a little different in Japan to elsewhere. The Japanese version seems to come with a stronger emphasis on a sort of grownup or mature male charm. And if that's the case, then I guess I'm happy to hear it. ~ Ken Watanabe

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages ... the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide ... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The moment you decide that you're a grownup now, and therefore must put away foolish things like staying out all night or cruising down strange highways is the moment you will lose that ineffable glow of youth. If you don't believe me, look around. Study those people who would rather go to shopping malls than dance halls, who think the height of depravity is bidding two no trump with only fifteen points. Every single one of these people has a stringy neck. ~ Cynthia Heimel

Grownups are the ones who puzzle me at Christmastime...Who, but a grownup, would ruin a beautiful holiday season for himself by suddenly attempting to correspond with four hundred people he doesn't see all year? ~ Charles M. Schulz

sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You ~ Stephen King

I think being young in a grownup world, I think it stunted me a little bit. I had to grow up too fast on the outside, but I didn't get to grow up on the inside in the way that you might if you're allowed to fail more. ~ Laura Benanti

Dave couldn't remember the last time a grownup had apologized to him. ~ Andrew Clements

I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I'm not a grownup, just a kid who has been around for a while. ~ Millie Florence

He tossed her over his shoulder and stalked back to the bedroom.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I've had enough babysitting duty. It's time for some grownup action. ~ Terry Spear

A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people; it has its sky and its abysses, a sky without stars, abysses into which no light can ever penetrate. ~ Julien Green

I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I'm starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life's sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it's my own choices that'll lock me in, it seems unavoidable
if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them. ~ David Foster Wallace

I think your 20s are the hardest part of life. I mean, everyone goes on about how hard it is to be a teenager, but actually I think it's tougher to be in your 20s because you're expected to be a grownup and expected to earn your own living and be successful and I think you feel like a kid still. ~ Nigel Cole

No matter how fine your suit and your shoes, you will remind everyone that you are not yet a grownup man by wearing them with your old college knapsack, in its nasty, nylon glory. ~ Russell Smith

A boy has other people do the talking for him; a man speaks his mind. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Sits a grownup looking at the same old statue, and hey, Paul, Tall Paul, I'm here to say you're the same in every way, you ain't aged a motherfucking day. ~ Stephen King

My favorite part on 'Energy Fields,' at the end of the track is a little girl laughing, and to me, it's a child watching the world, her friends, and so-called grownup people, and the way they try to understand the world. ~ Dave Davies

I think I was a bit frightened of having to be a grownup and tried to put that off for as long as I could. ~ Rufus Sewell

I find that the majority of the year, I don't spend acting. I spend it either writing or editing or producing, or putting things together. So it's as shocking as it is tragic. I really enjoy it. It's a valuable skill set. I certainly feel like more of a grownup. ~ Charlie Day

I was raised in the city by a one-eyed mother... ~ Gillian Flynn

Underline in your books, jot notes in the margins, and turn the corners of your pages down. Public education is a beautiful dream, but public classrooms too often train students not to mark, write in, disfigure, or in any way make books permanently their own. You're a grownup now, so buy your own books if you possibly can. In my opinion, a cheap paperback filled with your own notes is worth five times as much as a beautiful collector's edition. ~ Susan Wise Bauer

He sounds to himself, saying this, like an impersonator; life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup. ~ John Updike

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life. ~ A. N. Wilson

I suppose we'll get used to being grownup in time. There won't be so many unexpected things about it by and by–though, after all, I fancy it's the unexpected things that give spice to life. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Somewhere in the dim recesses of the journalistic soul lies the horrible suspicion: This is really a pretty shallow and maybe unseemly way for a grownup to make a living. ~ Andrew Ferguson

nodded, because Mr. Keene was a grownup and you were supposed to agree with grownups at all costs (his mother had taught him that), but inside he was thinking: Oh, I've heard that bullshit before. It was about what the doctor said when he opened his sterilizer and the sharp frightening smell of alcohol drifted out, stinging his nostrils. That was the smell of shots and this was the smell ~ Stephen King

If a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Children are not cruel. Children are mirrors. They want to be "grownup," so they act how grown-ups act when we think they're not looking. They do not act how we tell them to act at school assemblies. They act how we really act. They believe what we believe. They say what we say. And we have taught them that gay people are not okay. That overweight people are not okay. That Muslim people are not okay. That they are not equal. That they are to be feared. And people hurt the things they fear. We know that. What they are doing in the schools, what we are doing in the media
it's all the same. The only difference is that children bully in the hallways and the cafeterias while we bully from behind pulpits and legislative benches and sitcom one-liners. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

Aren't you frightened?"
Somehow I expected her to say no, to say something wise like a grownup would, or to explain that we can't presume to understand the Lord's plan.
She looked away. "Yes," she finally said, "I'm frightened all the time."
"Then why don't you act like it?"
"I do. I just do it in private."
"Because you don't trust me?"
"No," she said, "because I know you're frightened, too. ~ Nicholas Sparks

A grownup is a child with layers on.
Woody Harrelson ~ T.L. Alexander

He awakens from this dream unable to remember exactly what it was, or much at all beyond the simple fact that he has dreamed about being a child again. He touches his wife's smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood ... its beliefs and desires. I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it's just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it's nice to think so for awhile in the morning's clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel.

Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it. ~ Stephen King

I hated the company of other children. I wanted to be a grownup person, to be taken seriously. I hated the idea of childhood; I thought it was a moment of endless stupidity. ~ Karl Lagerfeld