Adults Quotes - Page 19

• For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

  Orson Scott Card

  Children, Commitment, Love Is

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Pathfinder”, p.360, Simon and Schuster

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• Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.

  Stefan Zweig

  Children, Mean, Sleep

  Stefan Zweig (2015). “The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, Journey into the Past”, p.19, Pushkin Press

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• Archie became absolutely still, afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge, the proof of what he'd always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but most grownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.

  Robert Cormier

  Running, Brother, Heart

  Robert Cormier (2013). “The Chocolate War”, p.22, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.

  Cory Doctorow

  Years, Drunk, Waiting

  Cory Doctorow (2015). “For The Win”, p.116, Booklassic

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• When you're a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don't want to know.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Boys, Effort, Want

  Ben Aaronovitch (2011). “Moon Over Soho”, p.113, Del Rey

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• Adults always acted like they could fix everything. But they can't. And they know it.

  Jana Oliver

  Knows

  Jana Oliver (2010). “Retro Demonology”, p.13, Macmillan

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• Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  Father, Trouble, Monotonous

  Sarah Addison Allen (2011). “The Peach Keeper: A Novel”, p.11, Bantam

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• When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Jobs, Cancer, Heart

  Laurie Halse Anderson (1999). “Speak”, Puffin

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• The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?

  John Green

  Being Yourself, Mean, Boys

  YouTube Chanel "vlogbrothers" / "How to Make Guys Like You", www.youtube.com. February 24, 2009.

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• 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.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Inspirational, Falling In Love, Teenager

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• The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

  Richard Dawkins

  Meaningful, Views, Wonderful

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• Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self.

  Luke Rhinehart

  Children, Self, Joy

  Luke Rhinehart (1998). “Dice Man”, p.65, The Overlook Press

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• Dimitri: "Rose, I'm seven years older than you. In ten years, that won't mean so much, but for now, it's huge. I'm an adult. You're a child.” Rose: "You didn't seem to think I was a child when you were all over me.” - Rose Hathaway & Dimitri Belikov (Vampire Academy)

  Richelle Mead

  Children, Mean, Thinking

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• The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.

  Mem Fox

  Inspirational, Children, Reading

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• Granny bit her lip. She was never quite certain about children, thinking of them-when she thought about them at all-as coming somewhere between animals and people. She understood babies. You put milk in one end and kept the other as clean as possible. Adults were even easier, because they did the feeding and cleaning themselves. But in between was a world of experience that she had never really inquired about. As far as she was aware, you just tried to stop them catching anything fatal and hoped that it would all turn out all right.

  Terry Pratchett

  Baby, Children, Thinking

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• The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL——IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate——it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Children, Hate, Animal

  Bret Easton Ellis (2014). “American Psycho: Picador Classic”, p.240, Pan Macmillan

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• it's weird how much people change. for example, when i was a kid i loved all of these things..and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. 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

  Kids, Thinking, Boys

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• Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Mean, Want, Sometimes

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2014). “Wintergirls”, p.108, Scholastic UK

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• Except even at the start, when we were in that can't-get-enough-of-you-phase, there was like some invisible wall between us. At first I tried to take it down, but it took so much effort to even make cracks. And then I got tired of trying. Then I justified it. This was just how adult relationships were, how love felt once you had a few battle scars.

  Gayle Forman

  Wall, Tired, Effort

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• Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

  Orson Scott Card

  Hurt, Lying, Sometimes

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Ender's Game”, p.18, Macmillan

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• I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yea, I was pretty cool.

  Tina Fey

  Two, Gaps, Turtlenecks

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• Such movies are always a danger...falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced...The theme is universal and encourages...unhealthy comparisons...why can't our lives be like that? It's a box left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.

  David Sedaris

  Falling In Love, Art, Epic

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• Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

  David Foster Wallace

  Mean, Exercise, Thinking

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

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• The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.

  Peter Drucker

  Children, Men, Self

  Peter Drucker (2012). “Managing the Non-Profit Organization”, p.10, Routledge

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• Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun.

  R. L. Stine

  Children, Fun, Book

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