Forced To Grow Up Quotes & Sayings

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. — Cheryl Strayed

There's no magic ruler by which we're all judged and weighed, not in this life. If you wait for someone to tell you it's time to grow up, you'll wait forever. Some people, quite happily, do just that. They don't do anything until they're forced to by circumstance — Heidi Cullinan

Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much. — Suzanne Collins

Well, growing up in LA, things are kind of thrust in front of you. You're almost forced to grow up pretty fast, with experiences and stuff. Going to that school there were a lot of rich girls, a lot of partying, a lot of wild things. You're put in this environment where you're forced to wear a uniform. It was all girls, so you rebel naturally, I think. I don't know, I just kind of got inspiration from every day living and going to school. — Sarah Hudson

There has been enough suffering in our country, there has been enough of children whose dreams die before they have a chance to grow and there has been enough of our elders who, having served their nation, are forced into indignity in their old age. — John Agyekum Kufuor

Faced with the challenge of an endless universe, Man will be forced to mature further, just as the Neanderthal-faced with an entire planet-had no choice but to grow away from the tradition of savagery. — Dean Koontz

It is a deep red flower that grows on a strong vine. Its leaves are dark and delicate. They grow best in shadowy places, but the flower itself finds stray sunbeams to bloom in." I looked at her. "That suits you. There is much of you that is both shadow and light. It grows in deep forests, and is rare because only skilled folk can tend one without harming it. It has a wondrous smell and is much sought and seldom found." I paused and made a point of examining her. "Yes, I am forced to pick, I would choose selas. — Patrick Rothfuss

She's really gone, then...Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly... — Suzanne Collins

All the while, Sayeed Faddoul would be watching from the small kitchen, a smile in his eyes. Another man might grow jealous of his wife's attentions, but not him. Sayeed was a quiet man - not awkward, as Arbeely could be, but possessed of a calm and steady nature that complemented his wife's heartfelt vivacity. He knew that it was his presence that let Maryam be so free; an unmarried woman, or one whose husband was less visible, would be forced to rein in her exuberance, or else risk the sorts of insinuations that might damage her name. But everyone could see that Sayeed was proud of his wife and was more than content to remain the unobtrusive partner, allowing her to shine. — Helene Wecker

Life pulls down every person to the least possible negativity and thrusts them outward to shine. It is the fight that matters; when you reach the bottom, you are left with no choice but to pick yourself up and climb every difficult step. Feeling down
and letting situations tear you apart proves that we all are human and nothing more or less. So, there is no need to worry about the devastating moments; there will come a moment
when you will be forced to stand for your rights and make one single move that will pull you into the world of success. Seize the moment and grow, that's all you can do and that's why you are born. — Kavipriya Moorthy

People don't need to be forced to grow. All we need is favorable circumstances: respect, love, honesty, and the space to explore. — Ellen Bass

To make a muscle grow, you must force it to go beyond its capabilities. The most potent way to apply that force is to train to failure. Training to failure means ... the muscles are forced to grow stronger and bigger — Nasser El Sonbaty

It's so important to raise people to grow up to be who they are and not be forced to be who they're not. What an awful thing to do to people - it's like being in prison. — Marlo Thomas

Children bring an awesome responsibility. We are entrusted with the task of shaping the lives of real people, with all their potential to do good or harm. At times, it is highly inconvenient. They disturb our sleep; they interfere with our plans; they stir up dormant and unresolved passions. And yet, as we seek to teach them, they are teaching us. They teach us what sacrifice is all about. The total dependence of a baby upon us, their powerlessness to reciprocate what we do for them, their inability to say thank you, all lead us to become less selfish. We are forced to change, to grow up, to look at the needs of another, to raise our boredom threshold, to develop patience, to deal with our insecurities, to become more whole. We are learning to love. — Nicky Lee

When you're in an industry where you're forced to grow up so quickly, part of you never grows up, and that's a good thing. — Debby Ryan

The smile that folded the puffed eyelids and creased the sagging cheeks was fixed and forced. I'd seen such smiles in mortuaries on the false face of death. It reminded me that I was going to grow old and die. — Ross Macdonald

Her fingers were gnarled and crooked like the roots of the oldest swamp trees. Not prissy roots of trees that grew in manicured parks and didn't understand the mess of life. These were roots forced to grow around, and down, and through, to survive. — Amber Kizer

I could never marry Mr. Finch, not after he tried to take liberties with me." His head shot up, the old fire rekindled. "He did what?" She almost regretted saying that. "He forced himself upon me." "How?" "He attempted a kiss I neither wanted nor encouraged." "Oh." Father waved a hand. "Is that all?" "That is quite enough. It proves he does not love me, though I can't imagine why he insisted on marrying a woman who despised him." "You would grow to love him." "Like Mother grew to love you?" she snapped. "Precisely." She — Christine Johnson

I was forced to grow up quicker than most. I was forced to be a young man at a young age. — Ray Rice

There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved, by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My mother never put an emphasis on looks. She let us grow up on our own time line. She never forced any beauty regimen into my world. — Rachel McAdams

Now hear a new truth. The Great Mother Herself will be forced to hide from those who are coming. She will seem to disappear while they grow strong, but someday She will return. Although our children and their children, perhaps to the thousandth generation, must live in the new world that has forgotten Her, they must never forget. She will return. — Barbara Ardinger

The only way to be a champion is by going through these forced reps and the torture and pain. That's way I call it the torture routine. Because it's like forced torture. Torturing my body. What helps me is to think of this pain as pleasure. Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure. And so when I am experiencing pain I'm in heaven. It's great. People suggest this is masochistic. But they're wrong. I like pain for a particular reason. I don't like needle's stuck in my arm. But I do like the pain that is necessary to be a champion. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

She fought the urge to take a closer look at his ruggedly handsome features, but failed. How could he have gotten better looking after being abused by every bronc-busting horse on the rodeo circuit? His angular jaw, strong and determined, was shaded with beard growth that was probably a day old, maybe more. Mandy suspected if Beau grew a full beard, it would grow in thick and be the smooth texture of his almost black head of hair. She forced aside past memories that gave her such knowledge with renewed irritation. — Lisa Mondello

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life. — Peter Ackroyd

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song."
I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old ... just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something. — Jennifer DeLucy

Editing is the very edge of your knowledge forced to grow
a test you can't cheat on. — S. Kelley Harrell

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you're mind believes it must be so. We watch them grow by our hands, not always knowing the paths they will choose with the obstacles we throw at them. They take on a life of their own and often surprise even us by their actions we couldn't have imagined before it poured out of us onto the paper. We could change it if we really wanted to, but it would be forced and not be true to the characters. And when something tragic happens and one is lost, we feel that loss even though we know they were not a friend, a family member or even ourselves. It can be a hard thing to voice sometimes, to give tribute to the one's left behind with the real sadness over something not so real. But we find the words and press on to the next challenge, because that's what good writers do. — Jennifer A. Marsh

She grimaced, remembering one incarnation when she and he had been forced to grow old together, peacefully. Most boring life she'd ever known, though at the time - ignorant of her grander part in the Pattern - she'd been happy with it. — Robert Jordan

Of course, in the end, when Mapplethorpe turned out to be very gay, Smith was left with no other option than to go off and write Horses and grow the world's most influential lady mustache instead. Her hand was forced into productivity. — Caitlin Moran

Eventually, however, the denial turned into emptiness and my childhood ended. — Floyd C. Forsberg

Our souls cannot be forced to grow, but like flowers, our spiritual selves can be nurtured until they blossom and flourish. — James Van Praagh

In the absence of any therapy, the mentally ill of the 20th century were chained, shackled, straitjacketed, kept nude, electrocuted, half-frozen, parboiled, violently hosed, wrapped in wet canvas, confined to "mummy bags", subjected to insulin-induced hypoglycemic comas, forced into seizures with massive doses of the stimulant Metrazol, injected with camphor, drugged into three-week comas with barbiturates and tranquilizers, involuntarily sterilized, and surgically mutilated. Rape by hospital staff was common, as was humiliation and verbal abuse. One reporter noted that a state hospital patient had been restrained for so long that his skin was beginning to grow around the leather straps. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Because he had not done what she, with her heart in her mouth, had hoped he would do, which was to be a man: deny everything, and swear on his life it was not true, and grow indignant at the false accusation, and shout curses at this ill-begotten society that did not hesitate to trample on one's honor, and remain imperturbable even when forced with crushing proofs of his disloyalty. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I think about 'The Simpsons,' which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30's. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won't lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age. — Ted Naifeh

I'm into everything. My iPod is very eclectic - if you kept it on shuffle, you'd be amazed. For example, I was forced to grow up on Dolly Parton. My mum was obsessed by her. She bought all this memorabilia for the front room. It's ridiculous. — Tinie Tempah

But there was no protecting you from it today. The world can be a harsh place and you witnessed that cold reality firsthand. You've been forced to grow up today in ways that aren't fair to you. — Rob Buyea

Thus he spent his whole life searching for his own truth, but it remained hidden to him because he had learned at a very young age to hate himself for what his mother had done to him. ( ... ) But not once did he allow himself to direct his endless, justified rage at the true culprit, the woman who had kept him locked up in her prison for as long as she could. All his life he attempted to free himself of that prison, with the help of drugs, travel, illusions, and above all poetry. But in all these desperate efforts to open the doors that would have led to liberation, one of them remained obstinently shut, the most important one: the door to the emotional reality of his childhood, to the feelings of the little child who was forced to grow up with a severely disturbed, malevolent woman, with no father to protect him from her. — Alice Miller

Are you aware that they inject all kinds of antibiotics into that meat you eat?
Yes, that same food supply and those same corporations that are actually causing and perpetuating WORLD HUNGER, because we humans could be eating the grain that they are feeding to the cows, that could live quite well on GRASS, if we didn't destroy the topsoil in this country's heartland; there are livestock an chickens that are being injected with hormones to make them grow bigger and faster and forced to live in filthy cramped conditions just so they can be slaughtered and end up on you high priced plate next to that tiny gray vegetable that you cooked to death instead of steaming. — Cornelia "Connie" DeDona

It felt like something that was meant to be kept secret, a new seed that might grow to something extraordinary if it wasn't forced to bloom too soon. — Leigh Bardugo

Life is messy. No matter how hard we try to create order, something happens to cause the structure we created to falter. Maybe that's the only way for us to learn. If everything stayed neat and orderly, then we would never be forced to grow and change. We need something unexpected to help us make sense of where we are and to guide us to where we need to go. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

I envy the trees that grow at crossroads. They are never forced to decide which way to go ... — Margarita Engle

This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It's the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that. — John Taylor Gatto

And that brings me to one last point. I've got a simple message for all the dedicated and patriotic federal workers who have either worked without pay, or who have been forced off the job without pay for these last few weeks. Including most of my own staff. Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters. You defend our country overseas, you deliver benefits to our troops who earned them when they come home, you guard our borders, you protect our civil rights, you help businesses grow and gain footholds in overseas markets. You protect the air we breathe, and the water our children drink, and you push the boundaries of science and space, and you guide hundreds of thousands of people each day through the glories of this country. Thank you. What you do is important, and don't let anybody else tell you different. — Barack Obama

We teenage girls are faced with a quandary: we know what we want but are forced to wait for our male counterparts to grow up. We are ready for intense and meaningful relationships, but research indicates that males will not reach maturity until their mid-20s. — Alexandra Adornetto

Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we're feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we're feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time. — Tahereh Mafi

wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She — Cheryl Strayed

I grew up going to school and high school and then shooting a movie for a few months. It's an odd way to grow up and is kind of forced maturity. — Logan Lerman

We have gone on too long blaming or pitying the mothers who devour their children, who sow the seeds of progressive dehumanization, because they have never grown to full humanity themselves. If the mother is at fault, why isn't it time to break the pattern by urging all these Sleeping Beauties to grow up and live their own lives? There never will be enough Prince Charmings or enough therapists to break that pattern now. It is society's job, and finally that of each woman alone. For it is not the strength of the mothers that is at fault but their weakness, their passive childlike dependency and immaturity that is mistaken for "femininity." Our society forces boys, insofar as it can, to grow up, to endure the pains of growth, to educate themselves to work, to move on. Why aren't girls forced to grow up - to achieve somehow the core of self that will end the unnecessary dilemma, the mistaken choice between femaleness and humanness that is implied in the feminine mystique? — Betty Friedan

Many argue that the twentieth century's council estates have had disastrous social consequences. People in poverty feel, and indeed actually grow, poorer if forced to live in a sink estate, while the middle classes flee to their own leafy ghettoes outside city centres. A successful 'place' mixes up the different groups in society, forcing them to mingle and to look out for each other. — Lucy Worsley

Nicholas Was ... older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die. The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories. Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time. He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher. Ho. Ho. Ho. — Neil Gaiman

The gamelan created in the listener a brain wave beyond all alphas and betas and thetas, a brain wave that paralyzed the normal channels of thought and forced new ones to grow outside them, in the untouched regions of the mind, like parallel blood vessels that form to accommodate a damaged heart. — Janet Fitch

For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ... To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting ... — Pope John Paul II

I used to think that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but I guess it's more so of a case-by-case thing when I look at it now. It especially doesn't help when most of the time, when forced to reckon with the realities of things, you have your illusions occupying you. — Lauren Lola

It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies ... Compared with this life, all public life, all fame, all wisdom, is by its nature cramped and cold and small. For on that defined and lighted public stage men are of necessity forced to profess one set of accomplishments, to rise to one rigid standard. It is the utterly unknown people, who can grow in all directions like an exuberant tree. — G.K. Chesterton

He [D'Artangnan] succumbs to her [Miledy Winter] level of seduction and gives into it. It's only when the series starts to progress that he realizes what she's doing, and the tables turn slightly. But that relationship really pays homage to how D'Artagnan can be easily swayed. You see him grow into somebody who can actually make a decision where he's not being used and forced into doing something that he doesn't want to do. — Luke Pasqualino

As the dreamscape around me grows clearer, I slip further away from it. The mind is a magical thing, I'm discovering. A dreamscape is made of thought and is wider than the sky, able to grow large enough to fit not just our own world, but every possibility and impossibility beyond it. Once I quit thinking of it as being forced into the laws of physics, it's easy to manipulate the dreamscape into anything I want. I don't know how I know all this, no more than I understand how I know things when I dream. I just do.
I throw up my hand, and a wall rises between the orange grove and me. Behind the wall, I start creating the world I need in Representative Belles's mind. — Beth Revis

Patience is not developed by being forced to wait in long lines or for long periods of time. Patience is a decision: to sit back rather than lean forward, to shift your weight from the balls of your feet to your heels. To settle your thoughts on now, to enjoy the journey, to give something or someone time to grow. — Ron Brackin

If she'd known him better, she might've tried to explain to Will that life never lets you hide. Plant, animal, or human - life forced them all to grow and learn. The more you tried to run, the harder your path got, and you'd still have to travel it. — Cornelia Funke

On this voyage, I couldn't help but think we need need. We need to be forced to go outside. We need to be forced to depend on one another. we need to be forced to sacrifice, to grow a garden, to fix a rood, to interact with neighbors. Nature has been all around me as a boy. It unleashed terrifying storms, spun circular cycles, inflicted bone-chilling, cold and renewed itself with springy revivifications. Yet I was completely oblivious to it all. I was playing video games. — Ken Ilgunas

And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture. — Jeanette Winterson

I was a little ham and was a very open kid, probably because I was around adults all the time. That also forced me to grow up fast, and I learned at an early age about how people lie and deceive each other. — Seymour Cassel

I often wonder what drives people to do things. Whether it's put into their minds at birth, or if it is learned as they grow. Maybe it's even forced upon them by circumstances that are out of their hands. Does anyone have control over their lives or are we all helpless? — Jessica Sorensen

I think George R. R. Martin made fantasy grow up. He brought a level of reality into the storytelling where you realize the good guys don't always win and anyone can die, because that's how life works. Bringing that level of reality into the story I think forced the genre to mature in a lot of ways that it hadn't prior. — Peter V. Brett

adolescent who expresses dissident opinion more or less vocally can end up in a place like that. Some of the children arrive there from orphanages. If a child tries to run away from an orphanage, it is considered normal in our country to commit him to a psychiatric facility and treat him with the strongest of sedatives, such as aminazine, used to suppress Soviet dissidents back in the 1970s. This is particularly shocking considering these institutions' general punitive trend and the absence of psychological help as such. All communication there is based on fear and the children's forced subjugation. They become exponentially more cruel as a result. Many of the children are illiterate, but no one makes an effort to do anything about that. On the contrary, they do everything to quash the last remnants of any motivation to grow. The children shut down and stop trusting words. I — Masha Gessen

We are now forced to actively pursue our struggles. If we do not go out of our way to stretch our comfort zones and grow, no one nor nature will do it for us. — Chris Matakas

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up. — Lindsey Haun