Grownups Quotes & Sayings

Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOB's given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren't likely to argue about bedtime. — P. J. O'Rourke

It is the importance of this quality of generosity in fiction that requires a measure of childishness in the writer. People who have strong mental focus and a sense of purpose in their lives, people who have respect for all that grownups generally respect (earning a good living, the flag, the school system, those who are richer than oneself, those who are beloved and famous, such as movie stars), are unlikely ever to make it through the many revisions it takes to tell a story beautifully, without visible tricks, nor would they be able to tolerate the fame and fortune of those who tell stories stupidly, with hundreds of tricks, all of them old and boring to the discriminating mind. First, with his stubborn churlishness the good writer scoffs at what the grownups are praising, then, with his childish forgetfulness and indifference to what sensible people think, he goes back to his foolish pastime, the making of real art. — John Gardner

This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun. — William Golding

Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always. — Elizabeth Enright

Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you. — Scarlett Thomas

Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults. — Eric Hoffer

There is something beginning to be wrong with the mortals, a certain lack of interest and ability. The birth rate has plummeted all over the world. There are millions of inner children and fewer and fewer real ones. I remember seeing a holo feature on a certain famous amusement park: roller coasters and merry-go-rounds packed with forty-year-olds clutching the wonder of childhood to themselves like harpies, and not one little face in the crowd. Neverland has been invaded by the grownups, no children allowed. It's better than having lots of real kids starving in gutters, at least. Mind — Kage Baker

The world is an orphanage for grownups — Elizabeth Swados

Jackie looked from me to Denise and back, and I could swear I saw comprehension dawning in his eyes and he was about to say something, but to everyone's surprise, it was Jaymee who suddenly blurted out "Mommy! You're sleeping with him?"

"Jaymee!" Denise gasped, "What are you saying!? Where did you ever learn to ask such a thing!?"

"From Grandma, Mommy! She said when two grownups love each other very much, they go to bed together!"

How could I keep from bursting into laughter? Denise's composure was completely gone, Jaymee was blushing brightly at the realization that something she'd said had come out wrong without quite realizing what it was, and the look on Jackie's face from being beaten to the punchline was priceless. — B.R.L. Coryn

When you have an authority figure tell you something that distinguishes you, there's a little bit of a badge of courage or pride point that comes with it, and also some relief that the grownups actually have an answer for the problem. But, at the same time, there's suspicion and defensiveness, like, Why is the way I do things a problem? Maybe the way you do things is the problem. All of these things come with the very notion that you've been described. — Lucy Corin

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems. — Kate DiCamillo

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up — Stephen King

What if there were no grownups? Suppose the whole idea of grownups was an illusion? What if their money was really just playground marbles, their business deals no more than baseball-card trades, their wars only games of guns in the park? What if they were all still snotty-nosed kids inside their suits and dresses? Christ, that couldn't be, could it? It was too horrible to think about. — Stephen King

Europe enjoyed a heritage of fairy tales alive with talking animals--some almost real, other deliciously bogus-- to spark child's fantasies and gallop grownups to the cherished haunts of childhood. It pleased Antonina that her zoo offered on orient of fabled creatures, where book pages sprang alive and people could parley with ferocious animals. — Diane Ackerman

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. — Stephen M. Irwin

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

But grownups were always in a turmoil, every possible action muddied over by thoughts of the consequences, by self-doubt, by selfimage, by feelings of love and responsibility. Every possible choice seemed to have drawbacks, and sometimes he didn't understand why the drawbacks were drawbacks. It was very hard. — Stephen King

Children, you are the future,' he said, and today I realize he did not mean it the way it sounded. The reason children are the future is not that they will one day be grownups. No, the reason is that mankind is moving more and more in the direction of infancy, and childhood is the image of the future. — Milan Kundera

I am curious about grownups, not children. — Jerzy Kosinski

And children are still the way you were ... as a child, sad and happy in just the same way and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The life I chose when I promised my six-year-old self never to forget being a child, never to grow frightened and dishonest like the grownups I saw, nodding politely to each other without affection, and decided to put my true self in a time capsule for later use. — Aurora Levins Morales

Grownups have to say 'please,' too. — Tommy Lasorda

And the little prince said to the man, 'Grownups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always explaining things to them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Dennis to friend: No use crying, Joey. There aren't any grownups around. — Hank Ketcham

The last jobs I had were fixing cars and covering football games for a local access TV station. As in driving the mobile van to the field, setting up 3 cameras, teaching depressed grownups and interns how to use them and directing the game from the van and then wanting to kill myself. — Louis C.K.

It's a game box. They were invented so teenagers wouldn't have to talk to grownups. — Eoin Colfer

The young woman was crying, in the way that grownups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way. — Neil Gaiman

The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.
Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites. — Katherine Dunn

He sounds to himself, saying this, like an impersonator; life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup. — John Updike

What this country needs is Discipline! Peace is a great dream, but maybe sometimes it's only a pipe dream! I'm not so sure - now this will shock you, but I want you to listen to one woman who will tell you the unadulterated hard truth instead of a lot of sentimental taffy, and I'm not sure but that we need to be in a real war again, in order to learn Discipline! We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning. That's good enough in its way, but isn't it, after all, just a nice toy for grownups? No, what we all of us must have, if this great land is going to go on maintaining its high position among the Congress of Nations, is Discipline - Will Power - Character! — Sinclair Lewis

Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright
They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose
They'd build a ship
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life.
They wouldn't quarrel
Or break my specs
Or talk about a beast
If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup ... a sign or something. — William Golding

If grownups want to dress in Tudor costume, douse babies in water, intone over the dead and do strange things with wine and wafers, it is a free country. But for a Christian sect to claim ownership of the legal definition of a human relationship is way out of order. — Simon Jenkins

Linus entered the elevator while the grownups talked and looked at the buttons. Buttons covered all the walls, and even the door. He pressed one, and with the luck that comes to children in fancy hotels, it was the fire alarm. — Ella Minster

She started to speak, but then stopped. Anything she could think of to say seemed a mistake. In fact, speech in general seemed a mistake. It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work. from Back When We Were Grownups. — Anne Tyler

Cute-and-furry was always an easier sell than carapaced-and-multilegged, for some obscure reason. Grownups, so unreasonable ... — Lois McMaster Bujold

Children want to do what grownups do. — Beverly Cleary

But she was one of those people who change very little between twenty and sixty. Instead of growing and developing into whatever kind of creatures they are, slowly and consistently, they have three periods of their lives, with sharp lines of demarcation between them: they are children, then grownups, then old men and women. Suddenly — Madeleine L'Engle

Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse; we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethan's used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls an articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence. — Madeleine L'Engle

Grownups, as a rule, should always be ready to pay for their own meals - or else ready to graciously accept their date's insistence on paying. The point is, one doesn't sit there batting one's eyelashes, fully expecting someone else to claim the bill. — Lynn Coady

Integrity is not something that grownups have and adolescents can aspire to. Integrity is something that all of us, at all ages, are constantly striving for. — Harold S. Kushner

I'll do anything for kids but I don't sign anything for grownups anymore. — Clinton Portis

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it. — Madeleine L'Engle

Kaoru: Grownups are so tiresome. They fake their smiles all day long and they try to force us to do the same. It's no fun at all. — Bisco Hatori

'Death at an Early Age' was about racial segregation in Boston. 'Illiterate America' was about grownups who can't read. 'Rachel and Her Children' was about people who were homeless in the middle of Manhattan. — Jonathan Kozol

I think that it is expansive for the mind, for the fantasy of children and grownups alike, to understand that the world is huge. There is so much in the world to experience, and the odds are so essential to life. — Jessye Norman

All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniusized by grownups. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Grownups can be such fakes, I thought. They are always acting like they are trying to help you, and like they want to take care of you, but really they just want something from you. — Ava Dellaira

Call me crazy, but I still believe in you grownups! — Kid President

Kids are in ongoing need of support, and they get various versions of it from grownups which aren't legitimate - a grownup's version of what we think you should have. We tell you what creativity is, and we even tell you what you're thinking. — Jules Feiffer

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. — Randall Jarrell

Children are far more interesting to work with than grownups. They're incredibly honest. They'll tell you exactly what they think. — Tim Sample

Next time I'll just send the three of you e-mails. What was I thinking when I decided to have this meeting? (Acheron)
Oh, I know. That men who are a couple of thousand years old could actually behave like grownups? (Nick)
(Zarek elbowed Nick in the stomach.)
Oops. Involuntary arm spasm. (Zarek) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

nodded, because Mr. Keene was a grownup and you were supposed to agree with grownups at all costs (his mother had taught him that), but inside he was thinking: Oh, I've heard that bullshit before. It was about what the doctor said when he opened his sterilizer and the sharp frightening smell of alcohol drifted out, stinging his nostrils. That was the smell of shots and this was the smell — Stephen King

It's (Politics) rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But it's the only sport for grownups. — Robert A. Heinlein

I don't really think differently of making a movie for grownups or making a movie for kids, if it's boring it's boring, so you want it to be entertaining and I think funny is funny whether it's for kids or grownups, the only real difference is language. — Jack Black

I think people are interested in anything that's a little bigger than life and that's colorful and - you know, what they like? They like fairy tales for grownups. — Stan Lee

You talked to us about what kind of fifth-graders we wanted to be this year. How it was all in our choices, every minute of our days. How even grownups like you had to think about it sometimes, to be the person they wanted to be. — W.H. Beck

Is not Jesus pointing to children even as models for grownups? — Pope John Paul II

I thought acting was what grownups did. It was such a part of my childhood. I was already in love with performing before I knew there were other options. By then, it was too late. — Katherine Waterston

Grownups don't pay it much attention because they can't imagine anything more majestic to a child than their own selves and so confused dependance for reverence. — Toni Morrison

I make the surprised O with my mouth, although I am not really that surprised. It was the kind of story that grownups tell children to complicate a thing when they could just tell you the thing itself, much faster. — Claire King

One thing is certain: for many of those who came back from WWII, the music of Frank Sinatra was no consolation for their losses. Some had lost friends. Some had lost wives and lovers. All had lost portions of their youth. More important to the Sinatra career the girls started marrying the men who came home. Bobby socks vanished from many closets. The girls who wore them had no need anymore for imaginary lovers; they had husbands. Nothing is more embarrassing to grownups than the passions of adolescence, and for many, Frank Sinatra was the passion. — Pete Hamill

Children are more than we think they are; they can do more than we think they can do. All they need is a vote of confidence from grownups, whom they will ultimately replace anyway. Their dream today will become the realities of tomorrow. — Wess Stafford

I find this morning that what I most vividly and longingly recall is the sight of my grandson and his little sunburnt sister returning to their kitchen door from an excursion, with trophies of the meadow clutched in their hands - she with a couple of violets, and smiling, he serious and holding dandelions, strangling them in a responsible grip. Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists - just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts. — E.B. White

As a kid, I really did want to hang out with the grownups, so it was hanging out with the hippest grownups in the world. This was the nicest bunch of people I've worked with in show business, with the exception of the people around A Mighty Wind. It really was a wonderful eight years. — Harry Shearer

That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes. — Kurt Vonnegut

Coffee is a drink for grownups. No kid ever likes coffee. It's psychoactive. Coffee is the drug of memory. — Ian McDonald

Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them. — John Irving

Grownups don't know how to believe — Frances Griffiths

Naturally, grown-up citizens are concerned about the beatniks and delinquents ... The question is why the grownups do not, more soberly, draw the same conclusions as the youth. Or, since no doubt many people are quite clear about the connection that the structure of society that has becoming increasingly dominant in our country is disastrous to the growth of excellence and manliness, why don't more people speak up and say so? — Paul Goodman

Grownups have it in them to be creative, and sometimes, with the help of ambition, hard work, and a bit of luck they actually are, but being grownups, they have no sooner created some epoch-making invention than they become a slave to it. — Gunter Grass

In grownups, mercury can cause memory loss, tremors, vision loss and numbness of the fingers and toes. It can also adversely affect fertility and blood pressure regulation, and a growing body of evidence suggests that exposure to mercury may lead to heart disease. — Frances Beinecke

Leonora is the grownups' version of Cinderella. She doesn't take crap from any ugly stepsisters. She doesn't sit indoors waiting to be rescued by prince charming. Oh, no, she rescues prince charming, Florestan, who's locked up in a dungeon by his archenemy, Pizarro. Cinderella was fun when we were little girls, played with dolls and believed in passive fairytales. Now that we're grown women who play with toys, it's only fit to believe in active fairytales. — Luella Christie

I feel bad for the kids that are in school right now and the young people all across America who don't realize that the grownups who are supposed to be running this country are the verge of leaving them as the first generation of Americans worse off than the generation before. — Marco Rubio

But I'll tell you secret. Something even a lot of grownups haven't figured out yet,' Miss Taylor leaned forward and whispered 'When we face our fears, we take their power away. — Bobby Nelson

There are poets and there are grownups. — Jean Cocteau

I had problems getting my words out. If people spoke directly to me, I understood what they said. But when the grownups got to yakking really fast by themselves, it just sounded like 'oi oi.' I thought grownups had a separate language. I've now figured out I was not hearing the hard consonant sounds. — Temple Grandin

Grownups have a tendency to talk themselves out of things, saying it will never work, but kids are fabulously optimistic. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

She pushed the revelation about Dr. Kruger into a side pocket of her mind, to be examined more thoroughly another time. Who would ever have suspected that he was shy? That any grownups were, for that matter, and especially a person as important as a doctor? — Beverly Butler

I just took the idea that King Kong was too big for everything and reversed it and put George in a land of giants, which is basically what every kid goes through anyway - that, you know, the world is made for grownups, for tall people, for the giants. — William Joyce

As a young girl, I used to dream of giving an interview. You dream of stardom as a kid. People think they don't want to be stars. Everyone wants to be a star! That's the truth. Even grownups; they pretend they don't want to be one and don't care. But everyone wants to. — Sania Mirza

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups. — Margaret Atwood

People think that children don't know anything. It's enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time. — Muriel Barbery

I had left school at 16, gone to stage school - and, until I was 22, I hadn't really played anyone but myself. Then in 1979, I made a film with Mike Leigh called 'Grownups,' which went out on the BBC, and overnight this new career opened up. — Lesley Manville

When people are grownups they're grown ups. They make their own decisions you know. — Rene Redzepi

The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year. — James Baldwin

Everything was new, everything was exciting. We were playing house, it seemed, playing at being grownups. When you're in love, I suppose everything feels like a game. — S.E. Lynes

There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not. — Michael Morpurgo

We grew up, he thought. We didn't think it would happen, not then, not to us. But it did, and if I go in there it will be real: we're all grownups now. He — Stephen King

Although they had been honed like hawks toward the guns since early childhood, Cuthbert and Alain still carried an erroneous belief common to many boys their age: that their elders were also their betters, at least in such matters as planning and wit; they actually believed that grownups knew what they were doing. — Stephen King

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought. — Stephen King

We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything. — Maurice Sendak

I've made music for grownups most of my life as a singer/songwriter - often with my band, Nine Stories - recorded many albums, and 10 years ago I started recording kid's music, too. — Lisa Loeb

My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE
GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading. — Anne Fadiman

Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. 'You've just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more. — Jostein Gaarder

Children remember staying up late. Grownups think about getting up early — Robert Goolrick

The most striking difference between little ones and grownups is that little ones cannot worry, and they cannot worry because they have no past and no future. They live only in the present moment. Just watch children. If they play, they play and don't even hear us call them and don't notice anything that is going on around them. If they eat, they eat; if they sleep, they sleep. There is a beautiful English word which describes how they do whatever they do, they do it 'whole-heartedly', whereas grownups always are half-hearted. — Maria Augusta Von Trapp

wiped his chin with his handkerchief while Eddie used his aspirator again. 'I want to go now,' Eddie said. 'Let me finish, please.' 'No! I want to go, you've got your money and I want to go!' 'Let me finish,' Mr Keene said, so forbiddingly that Eddie sat back in his chair. Grownups could be so hateful in their power sometimes. So hateful. — Stephen King

But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing. — Rainer Maria Rilke

What is difficult about learning - any kind of learning - is that you have to give up what you know already to make room for the new ideas. Children are much better at it than grownups. — Monica Furlong