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Adults Quotes

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Adults Quotes

“Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.”

“My falling in love with spoken word poetry definitely came out of that time period where all the adults around me were failing to supply me with any answers. Everyone was too busy dealing with things that were more important. I was pretty lost and invisible. And all of a sudden, this world opened up where I could get on stage and perform in front of my peers. People would listen to me and see me, and people would say, "That thing you created was important." And that was so validating and necessary at that specific moment.”

“Ideas about the scope and meaning of freedom of speech do expand and contract with the times. At the moment, we live in an age that is very permissive, both legally and socially, on a wide range of subjects from Karl Marx to kinky sex. This has not always been the case. Things that even children freely see and read and hear today -- writings, pictures, words -- would have been banned as just plain obscene, even for adults, as recently as the middle of the twentieth century.”

“Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us--through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.”

“Parents are never forgiven for not giving just the right response at the appropriate moment. Or, rather, there are particular times in the adolescent's or young adult's life, when a certain response is needed, and this need is not met, and the failure to meet this need is forever remembered, and is never forgiven.”

“Because of what I experienced when I was a kid, I want kids to have that kind of an epiphany moment, that little jolt, that little spark that they see when Dusty ['Planes'] flies higher than he has before. That scene where he flies straight up, and he's starting to get dizzy, and then finally it comes together. We forget as adults. We get jaded and we think that's kids' stuff, but for a kid who doesn't know about anything technical or how a movie is made, they're just going to see this and hear this beautiful score and see this dynamic, fantastical thing happening in front of them.”

“As part of our ongoing series of reports on the environment, 'America Goes Green,' we take on the question that can make otherwise competent adults quake with fear. We've all been there. You come to the end of the checkout line and then comes that question: 'Paper or plastic?' For that one brief moment, we grocery buyers are made to feel like the fate of the planet hinges on our decision.”

“Adults are naturally most conscious of directing the conduct of others when they are immediately aiming so to do. As a rule, they have such an aim consciously when they find themselves resisted; when others are doing things they do not wish them to do. But the more permanent and influential modes of control are those which operate from moment to moment continuously without such deliberate intention on our part.”

“Once I became an adult and started to pursue writing as a professional career, I realized my main characters were always young people. My stories naturally center around children and teenagers. I think it's because I have worked with youth for about twelve years. The pains and joys of adolescents are moments I witness on a daily basis, so their stories are always with me as I write.”

“If I am acting out in any particular way that is harmful to myself - without a shadow of doubt, there is a feeling suppressed under wanting that second candy bar. Often, it is that little voice I haven't paid attention to. It's generally not the adult voice. If I take a moment to address that and figure out what that is, the desire for the candy bar seems to dissipate.”

“Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.”

“We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know we lived.”

“Maybe there are moments between any two adults in love when the age of one of them dissolves before the other's eyes, when the first refuge of the soul at its creation is laid bare and skinless as a sunbeam through a window. Innocence and vulnerability, two unmeasurable quantities...Perhaps that is the essence of the protection's intimacy, that it dwells in camouflage and justifies itself in stillness.”

“We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.”

“I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently -during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere- and one can ignore them or seize them.”

“I think being a teenager is such a compelling time period in your life--it gives you some of your worst scars and some of your most exhilarating moments. It's a fascinating place; old enough to feel truly adult, old enough to make decisions that affect the rest of your life, old enough to fall in love, yet, at the same time too young (in most cases) to be free to make a lot of those decisions without someone else's approval.”

“As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.”

“Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's stories begin, and "prostitute" is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.”

“The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”

“It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?”