Quotes & Sayings About Grown Ups

Most married people can expect a specific other person to be there for them in a way that a single person typically cannot. Does that make married people more mature than single people?

Married people are on training wheels. Singles are riding the bikes for grown-ups. — Bella DePaulo

I am totally convinced that most grown-ups have completely forgotten what is it like to be a child between the ages of five and then ... I can remember exactly what it was like. I am certain I can. — Roald Dahl

Red remembered growing up in that house as heaven. There were enough children on Bouton Road to form two baseball teams, when they felt like it, and they spent all their free time playing out of doors - boys and girls together, little ones and big ones. Suppers were brief, pesky interruptions foisted on them by their mothers. They disappeared again till they were called in for bed, and then they came protesting, all sweaty-faced and hot with grass blades sticking to them, begging for just another half hour. "I bet I can still name every kid on the block," Red would tell his own children. But that was not so impressive, because most of those kids had stayed on in the neighborhood as grown-ups, or at least come back to it later after trying out other, lesser places. Red — Anne Tyler

We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly. — Alison Gopnik

Literature is a source of pleasure, he said, it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be disassociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book. He insisted on the fact. Have you noticed, he'd say, that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who would say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature performs, instructs, it prepares you for life. — Laurence Cosse

Sometimes grown ups don't act their right old age — Barbara Park

When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true
such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. — E. Nesbit

I don't like fighting,' he said. 'It makes me hurt inside. Like I'm a kid again. In the cupboard, in the dark. If the grown-ups are fighting, it must be my fault. That's why I don't do rows.' He blinked hard, to keep the tears at bay. She was the only person in the world who could make him feel so exposed. It din't always feel like a good thing. 'Carol, I'm going home tomorrow. I can't manage without you. Not in any sense. So can we stop this no? I can't do it. — Val McDermid

Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we're big," Noah tells him.
"What did you write?"
"I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first."
"That's a very good answer."
"Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh."
"Did you write that?"
"Yes."
"What did your teacher say?"
"She said I hadn't understood the task."
"And what did you say?"
"I said she hadn't understood my answer. — Fredrik Backman

They'd have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they'd been scared silly that they might find that child dead. — Jenny Wingfield

Life is too precious to be a spectator sport. We are no longer merely fans, rooting for the winning team. We are the team. We are the grown-ups. Whatever you believe is true, now is the time to give your respectful, inquisitive, and compassionate self to it. — Vicki Robin

They know better than you, they're grown-ups. Jake thought that was bullshit. If being a grown-up really meant knowing better, why did his father go on smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and snorting cocaine until his nose bled? — Stephen King

The habit of grown-ups reading living books and retaining the power to digest them will be lost if we refuse to give a little time for Mother Culture. A wise mother, an admired mother and wife, when asked how, with her weak physical health and many demands on her time, she managed to read so much said, "Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me - a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel or one of poetry. I always take up the one I feel fit for. That is the secret: always have something 'going' to grow by. — Karen Andreola

And your God is nothing but a teddy bear for grown-ups. You — Osho

The kids all knew me from Wayne's World. The grown-ups knew me after True Lies. — Tia Carrere

Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. — Michael Ende

It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren't certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking - when thoughts dissolved before you could name them. — Paula Fox

As the children of God, we think of Him as a perfect, almighty, loving, caring and forgiving persona. We pray to Him to bless us and our food, and to fix our troubles. Will we ever become the grown-ups of God? — Vinko Vrbanic

...There is no such thing as grown ups... — Neil Gaiman

When I was a kid, I loved to draw, and I was lucky because I had parents and teachers and grown-ups around who recognised and encouraged that. — Tony DiTerlizzi

Children, as well as grown-ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery-proof homes of Labrador, the tropics, the Orient, or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and
expedition by means of ever-improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of, let us say, President Lowell of Harvard; the
professor of Mathematics of Oxford; of the doctor of Indian antiquities of Delhi, etc. — R. Buckminster Fuller

And this I have learned grown-ups do not know the language of shadows. — Opal Whiteley

Analogies are lies grown-ups tell. — Brent Weeks

I love that feeling when you first open your eyes in the morning and you don't even know why everything seems different than usual. Then it hits you: Everything is quiet. No cars honking. No buses going down the street. Then you run over to the window, and outside everything is covered in white: the sidewalks, the trees, the cars on the street, your windowpanes. And when that happens on a school day and you find out your school is closed, well, I don't care how old I get: I'm always going to think that that's the best feeling in the world. And I'm never going to be one of those grown-ups that use an umbrella when it's snowing - ever. — R.J. Palacio

We picked some pea pods, opened them and ate the peas inside. Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting. — Neil Gaiman

Then, that memorably powerful look into my eyes told me something more: compared to dogs, wolves are grown-ups. He was not asking for help, head down, forehead wrinkled, as a dog might: "Is this right? What do you want?" Instead, head high, gaze level, he was assessing me, like a poker player: "Are you in or out?" Judging that I was in, he made his move; and we both won. — Karen Pryor

Grown-ups aren't supposed to talk about "best friends," but he was among my closest and certainly my most constant friend from then until we were well into our thirties, when he inexplicably disappeared on me. I don't mean he fled the country or changed his identity or got abducted; the last I heard he was still living in Baltimore. He just stopped returning my calls. It took me almost a year of leaving messages on his answering machine to get the hint. It took me much longer to understand that I was never going to know what had happened. — Tim Kreider

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

They ate at the table like grown-ups. They never cried. They never complained. They never left their chopsticks standing upright in their rice. They played by themselves all day long without making a sound while we worked nearby in the fields. They drew pictures in the dirt for hours. And whenever we tried to pick them up and carry them home they shook their heads and said, "I'm too heavy" or "Mama, rest." They worried about us when we were tired. They worried about us when we were sad. They knew, without our telling them, when our knees were bothering us or it was our time of the month. — Julie Otsuka

And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy. I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe in one's own simple luck. There I was, suddenly, with a girl in my arms, figuratively, at least, doing the things that grown-ups did, holding her hand, and kissing her in the dark, and, when the picture had ended, standing aside, clearing my throat in grave politeness, to allow her to pass ahead of me under the heavy curtain and through the doorway out into the rain-washed sunlight of the summer evening. I was myself and at the same time someone else, someone completely other, completely new. — John Banville

knife. "Sure you have," Andy agreed. "But you don't do it. Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... — Stephen King

You know, back in the old days adults were respected because of how wise they were, and people went to them to help settle disputes. Nowadays it's a whole different world, and half the time I wonder if grown-ups should really be in charge. — Jeff Kinney

Kids want to be grown ups, adults want to be young and careless again.
Single people desperately want a relationship, but those who are in one still complain almost all the time and wish for freedom.
The poor want money, the rich want more of it.
This means that changing your situation doesn't prevent you from suffering, doesn't make your desires go away.
So you need to change something on the inside. — Lidiya K.

Have to start taking things mildly seriously, now! Ugh! Just the word sends shivers down my spine. Serious. Seeeerious. Cereal-ous. Trix are for kids. College is not for kids. College is for grown-ups. — Sara Wolf

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile. — Tim Pratt

The whole experience on 'Grown Ups 2' was like going to adult summer camp. — Halston Sage

It wasn't a bit of good fighting grown-ups. They could do exactly as they liked. — Enid Blyton

Do you really admire me very much.?" he asked the little prince.
"What does "admire" mean.?"
"To admire means that you consider me the handsomest, the best dressed, the richest and the most intelligent man on this planet."
"But you are all alone on your planet.!"
"Do me this kindness. Admire me all the same.!"
"I admire you," said the little prince with a slight shrug of his shoulders, "but why should that mean so much to you.?"
And the little prince went away.
"Grown- ups are really very odd," he said to himself, as he continued on his journey. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Angry at his parents and all grown-ups who thought that school life was a lark, a good time, the best years of your life with a few test and quizzes thrown in to keep you on your toes. Bullshit. There was nothing good about it. Tests were daily battles in the larger war of school. School meant rules and orders and commands. To say nothing of homework. — Robert Cormier

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

We have a lot of American TV in Australia. I grew up watching 'Seinfeld,' 'The Simpsons' and those prime time TV shows over the years that feature grown-ups and high school kids. We had a saturation of American voices. — Sarah Snook

I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal. — Anne Lamott

I never used to see August the way other people saw him. I knew he didn't look exactly normal, but I really didn't understand why strangers seemed so shocked when they saw him. Horrified. Sickened. Scared. There are so many words I can use to describe the looks on people's faces. And for a long time I didn't get it. I'd just get mad. Mad when they stared. Mad when they looked away. "What the heck are you looking at?" I'd say to people - even grown-ups. Then, when I was about eleven, I went to stay with Grans in Montauk for four weeks while August was having — R.J. Palacio

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing. — Alison Gopnik

I don't ever want to grow up. I guess I'm like Peter Pan. Grown-ups have problems. I want to stay happy. — Shaquille O'Neal

We started college having 18 years old young, naive spirit and we left as grown ups, men and women with life long friendships,life partners, it made us who we are whether we like it or not. — Anonymous Young Girl

From a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that. — John Hodgman

Nobody treating us like kids. For once, we gt to be equals, not babies. Could use more of that in the twenty-first. Age doesn't make grown-ups. — Joss Whedon

Comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups. — Stan Lee

So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN. — Jeannette Walls

First," said Ms. Johnson, "I want you to know that you are all winners,"

Why do grown-ups always say that? Duh,we know we're not all winners. — Bruce Hale

You're gonna really scare them grown-ups, Paddy,' said Achilleus. 'They'll be filling their nappies in fright. — Charlie Higson

Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. — E. Nesbit

That's why Camilla and I got married," said Denniston as they drove off. "We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It's a useful taste if one lives in England."
"How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?" said Jane. "I don't think I should ever learn to like rain and snow."
"It's the other way around," said Denniston. "Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven't you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children--and the dogs? They know what snow's made for. — C.S. Lewis

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony. — Ron Koertge

We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside ourskin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes
and knows it. — Frank Pittman

We need not deplore the renunciation of historical truth when we put forward rational grounds for the precepts of civilization. The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new-born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies . But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level. — Sigmund Freud

For old actors, just remember that inside you're only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you've forgotten how to do what kids know automatically. — Ian McKellen

When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles. — Esther Dyson

Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children. But just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget. — Walt Disney Company

I don't think most people realize - and there's no reason they should - the amount of demeaning garbage you have to take if you want a career in the arts. I mean, going off to med school is something you can say with your head high. Or being a banker or going into insurance or the family business - no problem. But the conversations I had with grown-ups after college ... "So you're done with school now, Bill." "That's right." "So what's next on the agenda?" Pause. Finally I would say it: "I want to be a writer." And then they would pause. "A writer." "I'd like to try." Third and final pause. And then one of two inevitable replies: either "What are you going to do next?" or "What are you really going to do?" That dread double litany ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do? ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do ... ? — William Goldman

But Schaffa is a grown-up, and grown-ups need their sleep; that's what her father always said whenever she or Chaga did something that woke him up. — N.K. Jemisin

Now, kids ... wine is alcohol. That's a drink for grown-ups.
Gee, Mr. Percy Jackson, you say, can't we have some wine?
No, no, kids. Wine is dangerous. I don't want any of you to drink alcohol until you're at least thirty-five years old. Even then, you should get a doctor's note and your parents' permission, drink responsibly (like one swig a month), and never operate heavy machinery while under the influence!
Okay ... I think that covers my legal bases. On with the story. — Rick Riordan

Jay became an adult. He got a job, married a wife, and they had a child. Now he had so many things to take care! Like all other grown ups, he talked more of being busy than of being happy. He completely forgot the little bird singing beautiful songs in his heart. — Ilchi Lee

Saying everything is okay doesn't make you a grown-up. — K. Weikel

I was grown up long before the grown ups were the grown ups. — Aporva Kala

Grown-ups really are decidedly odd", — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

When I was younger, I'd wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child's wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn't promise, not and mean it. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. — Roald Dahl

We say to our children, "Act like grown-ups," but Jesus said to the grown-ups, "Be like children. — Billy Graham

Parents get all focused on themselves, and they see their little babies start walkin' and talkin', and since they kinda look like them and sound like the, they start thinking of those little babies as themselves....And then something funny happens. Those babies grow up to be kids and teenages and grown-ups in their own right....so everything the kids do, everything, is a betrayal. — Barry Lyga

Xmas all grown ups sa is the season for the kiddies but this do not prevent them from taking a tot or 2 from the bot and having, it may seme, a better time than us. For children in fact Xmas is often a bit of a strane wot with pretending that everything is a surprise. Above all father xmas is a strane. You canot so much as mention that there is no father xmas when some grown-up sa Hush not in front of wee tim. So far as i am concerned if father xmas use langwage like that when he tripped over the bolster last time we had beter get a replacement. — Geoffrey Willans

People were like, 'Oh, there are going to be people running up to you taking pictures' and I thought it was going to be a bunch of little kids. But it's grown-ups! And that's, like, creepy. — Mo'ne Davis

Most grown-ups are never happier than when they have someone to look down on, and the Cooper Island Farsiders couldn't have been more delighted that they had the Cooper Lowsiders to despise. As long as the Farsiders had their immediate neighbors to oppress, they were saved the exacting inconvenience of recognizing their own shortcomings. — Emma Kennedy

Analogies are lies grown-ups tell." "Why? — Brent Weeks

When we are young we cannot know
what it is like to bigger grow
but why do grown-ups great and tall
so soon forget they once were small. — Marta Moran Bishop

I saw my parents as model grown-ups, and their manner, their silence, informed my sense of what adulthood looked and felt like. Grown-ups behaved rationally and calmly. Grown-ups worked during the day and came home at night and sat down for drinks and passed the evening quietly. — Caroline Knapp

DEAN: Come back when you're ready to play with the grown-ups. — Mina Carter

I have had, in the course of my life, lots of encounters and lots of serious people. I have spent lots of time with grown-ups. I have seen them at close range ... which haven't much improved my opinion of them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all I could imagine was someone thin, and smooth, and calm, to whom things ... happened. Some kind of souped-up princess with a credit card. I didn't have any notion about self-development, or following my interests, or learning big life lessons, or, most important, finding out what I was good at and trying to earn a living from it. I presumed that these were all things that some grown-ups would come along and basically tell me what to do about at some point, and that I really shouldn't worry about them. I didn't worry about what I was going to do. What I did worry about, and thought I should work hard at, was what I should be, instead. I thought all of my efforts should be concentrated on being fabulous, rather than doing fabulous things. — Caitlin Moran

Don't grown-ups ever get over things? — John Irving

My mum told me that grown-ups don't like teenagers, which is the last thing you want to hear when you are one yourself! — Ella Eyre

Perhaps all grown-ups were just children carefully putting on their grown-up disguises each day and then acting accordingly. — Liane Moriarty

Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary. — Matt Groening

You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time. — Kingsley Amis

If you screwed up and said out loud that you thought something scary was happening, grown-ups would say, "Oh, for Pete's sake - what an imagination." This is the best way to gaslight children. It keeps them under control, because if the parent is a mess, the children are doomed. It's best for the child to think he or she is the problem. Then there is toxic hope, which is better than no hope at all, that if the child can do better or need less, the parents will be fine. — Anne Lamott

Graduates leave university and can't find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their families and pay for their children's education, always bumping up against the thing we all know as harsh reality. — Paulo Coelho

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. — Walter Isaacson

You are not painting her into one of those goon suits. She is royalty. Dress her like royalty. Give her some glitter . . . some glitz. And a crown." "Go back to your room, Morpheus." Jeb takes the paintbrush. "The grown-ups have work to do. — A.G. Howard

Thirty-year-old children who refused to act like grown-ups. — Francoise Sagan

It was with a shock of pitying surprise that she realized, in later years, that the grown-ups had missed the paradise which the children found so easily. — Monica Dickens

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
I don't beg so much as command to differ. — Inga Muscio

Grown ups' could learn a lesson from watching cartoons. — James Jean-Pierre

Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations. — C.S. Lewis

The grown-ups, or maybe I should say the parents, ate in the dining room. — Ann Darby

My Favorite Kid President Quotes "Create something that will make the world more awesome." "Treat everybody like it's their birthday." "If you can't think of anything nice to say, you're not thinking hard enough." "Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody." "Give the world a reason to dance!" "Us humans are capable of war and sadness and other terrible stuff. But also CUPCAKES!" "Love changes everything so fill the world with it!" "Grown-ups who dream are the best kinds of grown-ups." "Don't be IN a party. BE a party." And my personal favorite, "Mail someone a corn dog. — Rainn Wilson

He was smiling. It was one of those sincere smiles grown-ups give kids when they're trying to get them in arm's reach for something bad. Doctors smile that way right before they give you a shot; teachers look the same just before they tell you they found out what you did. The Big Bad Wolf probably smiled at Red Riding Hood like that when he was pretending to be her grandma. Despite all my mother's flaws including her mean streak, I never once saw that travesty of an expression on her face. — Pat Cadigan

As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one ... each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment. — Mark Lawrence

Mackay had a low opinion of all Crusades. The Children's Crusade struck him as only slightly more sordid than the ten Crusades for grown-ups. O'Hare read this handsome passage out loud: History in her solemn page informs us that the crusaders were but ignorant and savage men, that their motives were those of bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway was one of blood and tears. Romance, on the other hand, dilates upon their piety and heroism, and portrays, in her most glowing and impassioned hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honor they acquired for themselves, and the great services they rendered to Christianity. — Kurt Vonnegut