#adulthood

The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#growth #soul #growth

There's something to that in both directions," said Ekaterin mildly. "Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It's so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap." "Yes, exactly," said Kareen eagerly. "You understand! So—how did you make them stop?" "You can't make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really," said Ekaterin slowly. "Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#dysfunctional-families #family #mental-health #family

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. ↗

— Walt Disney

#adulthood #entertainment #ideals #influence #lives

I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom's only instruction was 'You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.' That's my welcome to adulthood. She's like, 'No, don't even read it. Just pull the Republican lever. ↗

— Tina Fey

#big #even #family #go #grew

Comedy was the key to everything. I grew up fast and controlled my future by bringing it on faster than it naturally unfolded. I cheated myself out of a childhood but then got a running headstart into adulthood that no one else could keep up with. ↗

— Margaret Cho

#bringing #cheated #childhood #comedy #controlled

When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity. ↗

— Martin Sheen

#afford #because #belong #child #club

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them. ↗

— Dr. Seuss

#childhood #children

This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#age

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#childhood #coming-of-age #age

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

#aging #choices #life #life-paths #regrets