Quotes & Sayings About Growing Up And Friendship

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much. — Alice Hoffman

Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as friendship; as with the orange tree its blossoms and fruit appear at the same time, full of refreshment for sense and for soul. — Lucy Larcom

We're about to hit that age when we'll be too exhausted to maintain friendships, and the days of hanging out will be long behind us. — Gume Laurel III

I wanted her and only her.
I wanted to be a part of her storm.
I wanted to feel my pulse against hers.
I wanted the bitter on her sweet tongue.
I wanted the sadness in her sweet syrup eyes.
I wanted the silence in her screaming mind and the enigma that is really quite simple- a complicated happiness. I wasn't willing to let go. I was falling completely, forever, into solid fucking love that was swimming through my veins.
I wanted to be the breath in her mouth and the rhythm in her chest that would beat only for me. — Shey Stahl

Looking back on months and years of intimacy, to feel that your friend, while you still remember the moving words you exchanged, is yet growing distant and living in a world apart - all this is sadder far than partings brought by death. — Yoshida Kenko

I thought that there was only one kind of love, one that developed instantaneously and struck you like a bolt of lightning, made you irrational and selfish like it did my parents. I realized too late that love took different forms and the one we had - " He cupped her face. "It was there, the first day we met, growing "gradually from friendship into what's inside my heart now."
He brought her hand to his chest. "It's there, steady, constant, making my heart beat for you, making my heart race when you're near, making my heart sing like a goddamn canary when you're happy. I never thought this kind of love existed until I had lost you. — Marian Tee

As people grow up, they realize it's less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones. — Lauren Conrad

People might be making too much of me maturing and growing; I'm still the same person. I still like to joke around and have fun in the locker room and on the road trips. I still get into arguments with Jonathan because we both have strong opinions, and we're both so comfortable with our relationship that we can argue and still have a healthy friendship. — Patrick Kane

I found myself suddenly jealous of the time when things were simple, when days centered on creek walks and tetherball, and your biggest worry was whether you'd have riding or sailing. There were no boys, there were no secrets or rumors, and there were no regrets. Not even fear of regret. There was just a best friend and endless hours to fill with Pixy Stix and laughing so hard you couldn't breathe. — Kathryn Williams

It struck her how sad it was that all of them had grown up on top of one another like small animals in a too-small cage, and now would simply scatter. And that would be the end of that. Everything that had happened would be sucked away into memory and vapour, as though it hadn't even happened at all. — Lauren Oliver

We should learn from flowers, earthly stars which spend their entire lives shining, shining and growing despite all the difficulties they encounter. They know how to listen and understand the whispers of time, for it is an eternal friend that teaches the importance of friendship and sparkling hope. — Nur Bedeir

I just do not hang around anybody that I don't want to be with. Period. For me, that's been a blessing, and I can stay positive. I hang around people who are happy, who are growing, who want to learn, who don't mind saying sorry or thank you ... and [are] having a fun time. — John Assaraf

Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it in our heads that we need to get that feeling- that intimacy- from a single someone else. We call if growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find. — David Levithan

After months of separation her friends still catalyzed her thoughts and challenged her opinions and wrangled with her emotions, and she was relieved to see that they still slid into the familiar patterns, the comfortable ruts of long-established personalities. It was nice but it also worried her. Could there be room for growth? How could you change around the people that knew you best, who knew you backwards and forwards and knew you so well that they defined themselves by you and you by them? How could you possibly evolve, like really evolve and become a whole person all on your own, when your own makeup was inextricably intertwined with someone else's perception of themselves? — Katie Neipris

Always make an effort to be around people who will help you grow. — Joyce Rachelle

How did the muskrat discover our composter in the first place? Chased there by a predator scare, a waft of citrus scent carried to the creek by the evening thermal, or some adventurous urge to journey beyond the safety of the creek? The latter, admittedly anthropomorphic possibility appeals to me. While it's important not to get so far into such projections of human qualities into non-human realities that they begin to masquerade as fact, it's equally important to recognize that they provide openings for affection not unlike those that enable our affections for fellow human beings. Drawn into closer observation of the small details of muskrat behavior, the hand-like deftness of their front paws, their cat-like grooming, the contrast between their nervousness on land and their confident ease in the water, I quickly realized that I'd been observing more than one, perhaps several, individuals. I looked upon them with growing affection, with friendship. — Reg Darling

When I was growing up, my mother was always a friend to my siblings and me (in addition to being all the other things a mom is), and I was always grateful for that because I knew she was someone I could talk to and joke with, and argue with and that nothing would ever harm that friendship. — Marlo Thomas

I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me. — Laura Nowlin

Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience. — Julian Barnes

It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with Existence. It means to find the whole Existence within myself, it means to discover that Existence is alive in my own heart and being.
The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an exstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart.
It is to realize that the whole Existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Belonging to a group can provide the child with a variety of resources that an individual friendship often cannot
a sense of collective participation, experience with organizational roles, and group support in the enterprise of growing up. Groups also pose for the child some of the most acute problems of social life
of inclusion and exclusion, conformity and independence. — Zick Rubin

You're the only friend I need
Sharing beds like little kids
And laughing 'til our ribs get tough
But that will never be enough
You're the only friend I need
Sharing beds like little kids
And laughing 'til our ribs get tough
But that will never be enough — Lorde

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

Friendships do not grow up in any carefully tended and contemplated fashion ... They begin haphazard. — Christopher Morley

... when your palm laced like water
on a cheek of mine, a finger raiding
each contour by oath, we both knew
that in growing up, some signs had to be
sought behind closed doors, and upon discovery,
remain beyond the doors we wrought as ransom. — Jerrold Yam

Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's funny. Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here.
You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind.
If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it?
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.
It's the end, the end of the seventies. — Jonathan Lethem

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that. — Ally Condie

Do not expect trust to appear suddenly and in a state of completion. Trust grows gradually as we venture forth little by little, with God and each other. As our trust grows, so will our willingness and courage to speak and listen with greater freedom. Seeing things more clearly is often one of the fruits of our growing trust. — Jeannette A. Bakke

But he saw a rare determination in Haley's eyes. I can trust Haley's judgement, he told himself, even as he remembered how Haley had eaten that cheddar with the mold growing on it two weeks before.

Cheese and people are not the same. — Kit Alloway

But even then, even all those years when she was never physically by herself, she was beginning to feel the chasm growing between her and the rest of the world. It was like a small tear in the seam of a dress, a certain pulling away. A ripping. And once it started, there was no stopping it. Of course, she tried so hard to keep it together, to tether herself to this world. She filled her life with people. With friends and family. But even then she knew that mere presence of people in one's life cannot eliminate the terrifying sense of one's aloneness in the world. Being surrounded by people is not the same as connection. As friendship. As love. When Robert came along, she believed for a little while she had found the answer, the bridge that crossed the deep canyon. And children too became links between herself and normalcy. The accident didn't start it, it just proved the faultiness, the tenuousness of these connections. — T. Greenwood

For a girl who was lonely and desperate for friends, that group of people was the most important social thing to happen to me growing up. I can't imagine being as confident about my passion for geeky things today without that opportunity to connect with OTHER people who were saying, "Wow, I love those geeky things, too!" That early community taught me how wonderful it is to connect with like-minded people. No matter how lonely and isolated and starved for connection you are, there's always the possibility in the online world that you can find a place to be accepted, or discover a friendship that's started with the smallest of interests but could last a lifetime. Your qualification for finding a place to belong is enthusiasm and passion, and I think that's a beautiful thing. — Felicia Day

A Savvy Auntie knows that sisterhood and friendship are organic, transforming and growing as life goes on. — Anonymous

Just as soon as I meet and learn to love a friend we must part and go our separate ways, never to meet on quite the same ground again. For, disguise the fact as we will, when friends, even the closest-and perhaps the more so on account of that very closeness-meet again after a separation there is always a chill, lesser or greater, of change. Neither finds the other quite the same. This is only natural. Human nature is ever growing or retrograding-never stationary. But still, with all our philosophy who of us can repress a little feeling of bewildered disappointment when we realize that our friend is not and never can be just the same as before-even although the change may be an improvement? — L.M. Montgomery

It was strange, because she always felt that she hid herself from Erika, that she was more 'herself' with her 'true' friends, where the friendship flowed in an ordinary, uncomplicated, grown-up fashion (emails, phone calls, drinks, dinners, banter and jokes that everyone got), but right now it felt like none of those friends knew her the raw, ugly, childish, basic way that Erika did. — Liane Moriarty

Every day you say something or do something that challenges me, changes me. — Kiera Cass

Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life. — Pat Conroy

When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me. — Rob Reiner

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It's not a black darkness. It's simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I've heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It's all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space. — F.K. Preston

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? — F.K. Preston

We are two travelers, Roger and I. Roger's my dog-come here, you scamp! Jump for the gentleman-mind your eye! Over the table,-look out for the lamp! The rogue is growing a little old; Five years we've tramped through wind and weather, And slept out-doors when nights were cold, And ate and drank and starved together. — John Townsend Trowbridge

They were family. They had a deal, him and Ian. They'd had it since they were kids growing up in the same low-rent trailer park with exactly two ways out - prison or the US military. Ian had stayed in the Army and Alex had gotten out the minute they would pay for his college. The friendship had survived years and distance. — Lexi Blake

It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in the car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun. — Maggie Stiefvater

How do we deal with all the people we've been? What happens when we have to confront them? — Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched - growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him - a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come. — Octavia E. Butler

Such is life. We grow up. Planets like Tiny get new moons. Moons like me get new planets. — John Green

If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men. — Abdu'l- Baha

I realized with a growing and startling sense of clarity that the seminary was educating and training me for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the posture of this particular brand of Christianity toward the surrounding culture was one of enormous suspicion and at times hostility. It seemed that part of this evolving designation involved a posture of entrenchment and argument toward culture. But I loved culture. I loved the freedom to engage with people for the purpose of friendship and dialogue, not simply evangelism. — Tim Keel

That's how it started: a series of small hurts and excuses between two people that built up slowly, widening over time to form a vast and yawning divide. — Nenia Campbell

I'm a big man and I like big dogs ... The dogs kept growing until only one of us could get in the elevator. It caused enough hassles so they finally kicked me out of my apartment. — Wilt Chamberlain

It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement - all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual ... The greatest scientific deed of her life - proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them - owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed. — Albert Einstein

We need a more peaceful world, growing out of more peaceful families and neighborhoods and communities. To secure and cultivate such peace, "we must love others, even our enemies as well as our friends." The world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who are filled with the love of Christ do not seek to force others to do better; they inspire others to do better, indeed inspire them to the pursuit of God. We need to extend the hand of friendship. We need to be kinder, more gentle, more forgiving, and slower to anger. We need to love one another with the pure love of Christ. May this be our course and our desire. — Howard W. Hunter

I wanted to say all these things about how you just have to hold on to the things you love and let go of all the rest. — Charlotte Eriksson

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But [Patrick's] character is partly based on a boy named Mark who lived across the street from me when I was growing up ... I liked hanging out with him and was sad when he moved away after only a year in the neighborhood. I guess writing about Patrick is a way for me to spend more time with Mark. — Linda Sue Park

Some people make you want to be a better person, and that, for me, is the purest form of love. — Charlotte Eriksson

If growing up means not seeing one's family and friends on the regular - all in the name of paying the bills, then growing up is overrated. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana