#growing

I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we'd have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we'd climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again. We're swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it's just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we'll climb out, grab hands, and jumo again. ↗

— Gayle Forman

#growing-up #hopeful #reality-of-life #friendship

I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#life #life

I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#growing-up #life #maturity #life

A lot of childhood effort, worry, and whispering goes into cracking the codes of adult life. Children have to be accomplished spies. ↗

— Vera B. Williams

#growing-up #life

His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#life

The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted. ↗

— Roman Payne

#aging #growing-old #life #payne #time

Du kannst nicht viel von deiner Mutter lernen. Aber das kannst du von deiner Mutter lernen. Erstens, man kann über alles reden. Und zweitens, was die Leute denken, ist scheißegal. ↗

— Wolfgang Herrndorf

#life #mothers #tschick #life

Funny how at twenty-five you worry about not being taken seriously and take being a sex object for granted. Later you take being taken seriously for granted, and worry about not being a sex object. ↗

— Helen Fielding

#sex-object #funny

This is growing up, having to stomp out love, this is how people turn terrible. ↗

— Michelle Tea

#love

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#parenting