Growing Up Quotes

Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the center of it.

~ M.j. Croan

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.

~ Emily Giffin

In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

~ John Irving

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one...each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.

~ Mark Lawrence

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

~ P.j. O'rourke

As for the fact that Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle apeared to be going their different ways when they were usually inseparable, these things happened as people got older--Ron and Hermione, Harry reflected sadly, were living proof.

~ J.k. Rowling

We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.

~ Tim Tharp

When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.

~ Michael Marshall Smith

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold

I used to think that when I grew up there wouldn't be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure.What I'm finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there's nobody watching.

~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Don't try to make me grow up before my time…

~ Louisa May Alcott

You’re a teenager. It’s all complicated.

~ Jenny B. Jones

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.

~ Ethel Barrymore

When you were too young and naïve to see the risks, I incurred your wrath to protect you. Scream at me for it if you must. Thank me for it when you finally grow up.

~ Karen Marie Moning

Out of curiosity, when do I grow up and become a fullfledgedman with a penis?”“When words like ‘hump day’ don’t make you giggle like atwelve-year-old,” he retorted, blowing smoke my way.“Wow, that long?

~ Dani Alexander

Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different

~ Tana French

I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

~ Alan Bradley

It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.

~ Lauren Oliver

You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.

~ L.m. Montgomery

Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets.

~ John Green

Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.

~ Daniel Black

The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.

~ Judith Martin

I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.

~ Bill Watterson

Scott: I don't think I'm ready to be a grown-up.Kim: I don't think you are either, buddy. But hey, you'll get it. It just takes practice.

~ Bryan Lee O'malley

In a desperate attempt to stay young forever we have achieved eternal childishness, rather than eternal youth.

~ Daniel Prokop

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

~ Richard Peck

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

~ Jodi Picoult

It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice...Well, anyway, when I grow up, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words.

~ L.m. Montgomery

He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.

~ John Corey Whaley

I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were...miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around.

~ John Green

I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.

~ Terry Pratchett

You can get what you want or you can just get old.

~ Billy Joel

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.

~ J.m. Barrie

It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.

~ Roddy Doyle

I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?

~ Lorrie Moore

Some days you go bear hunting and you get eaten. Some days you come home with a nice rug to roll around on, and bear steaks. What they don't tell you as a kid is that sometimes you get the rug and steaks, but you also get some nice scars to go with them. As a child you don't understand that you can win, but that's it's not always worth the price. Once you understand and accept that possibility you become a real grown up, and the world becomes a much more serious place. Not less fun, but once you realize what can go wrong, it's a lot scarier to go hunting bears.

~ Laurell K. Hamilton

It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.

~ Kimberly Novosel

hat's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.

~ L.m. Montgomery

The truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing but does only and wholly what he must do.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up

~ Lenny Bruce