Adults Quotes - Page 16

• There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.

  Andre Breton

  Fairy Stories, Green, States

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• We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

  William Golding

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• I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.

  David Foster Wallace

  Parent, Doubt, Forgotten

  "All That" by David Foster Wallace, www.newyorker.com. December 14, 2009.

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• Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it." Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them.

  Betty Smith

  Hunting, Years, People

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

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• Face flushed, I shook my head and stared at my white-knuckled grip on the bed. Of all my pet peeves, condescending adults were probably at the top of the list.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  White, Pet, Bed

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)”, p.53, Scholastic Inc.

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• No one can survive childhood without being wounded. Everyone remembers at least one time when their parents rejected them, pushed them away, even though they may have still been in the womb, blind, and unable to speak. That's why, as adults, we all look for someone to become our parents again, and for someone to look after us in times of need. And we search for a person to live with who can provide the companionship we so desperately want.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Childhood, Parent, Needs

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• What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, School, Essence

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

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• I laughed. “You’re too young to be so … pessimistic,” I said, using the English word. “Pessi-what?” “Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.” “Pessimistic … pessimistic …” She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. “I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.

  Haruki Murakami

  Mean, Dark, English Words

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• Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.

  Mary Roach

  Airplane, Secret, Survival

  Mary Roach (2004). “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”, p.125, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Kids across the country have grown up accepting the idea that no one can harm your family if at least one of its adult members is in the shower. No one knows why.

  Sloane Crosley

  Country, Kids, Ideas

  Sloane Crosley (2012). “I Was Told There'd Be Cake”, p.62, Portobello Books

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• There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Book, Good Book

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• It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

  Nick Hornby

  Girl, Boys, Body

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.262, Penguin

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• The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water." "This is water." It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Simple, Sight

  "This Is Water". David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College, www.youtube.com. May 21, 2005.

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• Holden Caulfield is the embodiment of what we mean by the phrase “young adult” – too young to be a grown-up, but too wise to the world to be completely innocent. He’s caught in the in-between, and that in-between is what all young adult authors write about.

  David Levithan

  Wise, Writing, Mean

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• To my everlasting relief, he’d also stopped with the starch a few years back . The military made him big on spray starch, but I point-blank refused to touch the stuff after a while. He finally gave up doing it himself, and I manfully restrained myself from pointing out that the world didn’t explode when he did. And they say maturity is just for adults.

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Military, Maturity, Years

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• I think anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman's statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. Anorexia signifies that a young woman is so delicate that, like the women of China with their tiny broken feet, she needs a man to shelter and protect her from a world she cannot handle. Anorexic women signal with their bodies "I will take up only a small amount of space. I won't get in the way." They signal "I won't be intimidating or threatening." (Who is afraid of a seventy-pound adult?)

  Mary Pipher

  Men, Thinking, Feet

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• In family matters you can get over anything. That's one thing you'll learn as an adult. There's a lot you have to learn which is a lot worse than that. You'd never think of forgiving a friend for some of the things your parents did to you. But with friends it's different. Friends aren't the roll of the dice.

  Pat Conroy

  Thinking, Parent, Forgiving

  Pat Conroy (2016). “The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides: Three Classic Novels in One Collection”, p.976, Open Road Media

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• I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Weather, Done, Want

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories”, p.152, Zondervan

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• Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?

  Steve Toltz

  Children, Jumping, Bridges

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A Fraction of the Whole”, p.529, Spiegel & Grau

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• Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.

  John Green

  Children, Kids, Blow

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• After a childhood of hungering to be an adult, my hunger had passed. Unexpected fates had begun to catch my notice. These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep.

  Lorrie Moore

  Tired, Sleep, Fate

  Lorrie Moore (2009). “A Gate at the Stairs”, p.36, Vintage

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• Adults are living increasingly as children: completely in their imaginations. Reading Harry Potter while every newspaper in the country goes out of business. They know so little that is real.

  Lorrie Moore

  Country, Children, Real

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from Jul 17, 2011

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• How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care!

  Rick Yancey

  Design, Care, Whimsy

  Rick Yancey (2009). “The Monstrumologist”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

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• When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives

  June Jordan

  Girl, Children, Hippie

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• Yeah, and by the way? How much does it suck that I'm an adult if I kill somebody, and not if I want a beer?

  Rachel Caine

  Beer, Doe, Want

  Rachel Caine (2006). “Glass Houses: The Morganville Vampires”, p.129, Penguin

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