I'm Too Grown Quotes & Sayings

After years of working with missionaries, I am tempted to conclude that their endeavors merely prolong a dying race's agonies for ten or twenty years. The merciful plowman shoots a trusty horse grown too old for service. As philanthropists, might it not be our duty to likewise ameliorate the savages' sufferings by hastening their extinction? Think of your Red Indians, Adam, think on the treaties you Americans abrogate & renege on, time & time & time again. More humane, surely & more honest, just to knock the savages on the head & get it over with? — David Mitchell

And I notice too often that the most unfeeling of people relieve their shuttered hearts by cooing over babies, who when grown , will be the same people exploited or ignored. — Jeanette Winterson

A caregiver is changed by the culture of illness, just as one is changed by the dynamic era in which one lives. For one thing, I don't have as much time in conversation with myself, and I feel the loss. Certainly I worry more about his death, and mine too, since I;m so much a part of the evolving saga of his health, which I have to monitor every day. But I've grown stronger in every aspect of my life. In small ways: speaking more directly with people. In large ways: discovering I can handle adversity and potential loss and yet keep going. I've a better idea of my strength. I feel like I've been tested, like a willow whipped around violently in a hurricane, but still stranding, its roots strong enough to hold. [p. 301] — Diane Ackerman

And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. — Haruki Murakami

Marrok, in all
these years, you've grown to be like a grandson to me. I believe you can do this. Have faith in your
wolf, son. Where you're weak, he's strong. It's his mate, too, and I can guarantee he won't let her go
without a fight. — Rose Wynters

I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways! — Georgette Heyer

I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out - not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed. — Kiera Van Gelder

I was least attractive at age thirteen. Puberty ensnared me in its sebaceous, cysty grip. I was too skinny, my face hadn't grown into my teeth and my hair resembled a Brillo pad. I outgrew Thirteen, but she lives on inside me like a succubus ever draining me of my joie de vivre. There is no way in fucking hell I'm a Suicide Blonde dancing for INXS on that list. — Shannon Bradley-Colleary

And that's why I don't get to cry, I guess. Because they do. Because we're older but we're not the grown-ups who seem too far away to understand. I tuck that thought inside me, warm and small like balled hands inside hoodie pockets. Beneath the beech trees and sugar maples, feet crunching against dead leaves, I hope for strength. Because as much as I want to be the one crying, I want to be the kind of person someone can hold onto. — Emery Lord

-It is too hard yet to realize that they're grown up. When I look at those two tall sons of mine I wonder if they can possibly be the fat, sweet, dimpled babies I kissed and cuddled and sang to slumber the other day - only the other day ... — L.M. Montgomery

I, too, have had my revelation. I do not compare it with yours. It has no identifiable source. It is an inner conviction that has grown from a small thought to a large certainty that there is other life in the universe, that to prove its existence is the most gloriously human thing man can do, that to communicate with it would make this vast, incomprehensible place in which man lives, this unexplored forest of the night, a friendlier, happier, more wonderful, more exciting, holier place in which to be. — James Edwin Gunn

you told me, "Beihai, you've got a long way to go. I say that because I can still easily understand you, and being understandable to me means that your mind is still too simple, not subtle enough. On the day I can no longer read you or figure you out, but you can easily understand me, that's when you'll finally have grown up." And then I grew up like you said, and you could no longer so easily understand your son. — Liu Cixin

His stubble was thick and not groomed. He was not a man who forgot to shave that day or had been too busy to do so for a couple. It had been weeks. Though it was not a full grown beard. I — Kristen Ashley

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up. — Diane Meier

It's very important not to talk down to kids, and to give them something which they think is quite grown-up and hardcore. Kids themselves are very good at self-censoring. If they don't like something, if they think it's too strong for them, they'll simply stop reading. That's the thing about a book, you can't force someone to read it ... I think there's a lot in my books about friendship, leadership, about society and how it works, how we learn to live with each other and what skills do we need to make a viable society. Kids don't need to know any of that, they just want someone to be eaten again. — Charlie Higson

In the night, I've shrunk and everyone else on the island has grown. They're all nine feet tall and men and I'm four feet and a child. Dove, too, is a toy or possibly a dog as I lead her through the throngs of people. — Maggie Stiefvater

With the persistence of data, there is, too, the persistence of people. If you friend someone as a ten-year-old, it takes positive action to unfriend that person. In principle, everyone wants to stay in touch with the people they grew up with but social networking makes the idea of "people from one's past" close to an anachronism. Corbin reaches for a way to express his discomfort. he says "For the first time, people will stay your friends. It makes it harder to let go of your life and move on." Sanjay, sixteen, who wonders if he will be "writing on my friends' walls when I'm a grown-up," sums up his misgivings: "For the first time people can stay in touch with people all of their lives. But it used to be good that people could leave their high school friends behind and take on new identities. — Sherry Turkle

Today women live long into their children's adult lives ... too little is made of the pleasure we women feel in conversing with our grown children, and in allowing ourselves, from time to time, to think of them as friends. I have been fortunate in having children with whom conversation is possible; the sheerest pleasure here, for me, has been in meeting with them each alone ... [p. 185] — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

I held Angie Luna in that room for hours, and I remember the different times we made love like epochs in a civilization, each movement and every touch, apex upon abyss. In the luxury of our bed, we tried every position and every angle. I explored the curves on her body and delighted in seeing the freedom of her ecstasy. Her desperate whispers and pleas. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me too. We lay in bed with our limbs entangled, in a pacific silence that reminded me of existing on a beach just for the sake of such an existence. I couldn't imagine the world ever becoming better, and for some strange reason the thought slipped into my head that I had suddenly grown to be an old man because I could only hope to repeat, but never improve on, a night like this. I finally took her home sometime when the interstate was empty, and the bridges seemed to lead to nowhere, for they were desolate too. — Sergio Troncoso

It starts as a little nagging noise inside my skull, reminding me of what I think I know, and what I can never ever really know. And the noise sets to work inside my head, perpetuating its same pattern until it has grown so loud and so great, it is the only thought I can have. The only obsessive, earth-shattering sound of not mattering that I can hear. It's entirely made up of the pain felt by something already hurt too much. It's like the ruins of something destroyed by being hurt, and how awful it is to exist so alone, as ruins. — Ashly Lorenzana

I like shocking people just because, like, I can wear a dress, too. Not even for people to go, 'Oh she's grown up,' but to show people that I'm actually a girl. — Maisie Williams

By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be too much liberty, according to Shakespeare - "too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty" (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its praises: "Thus can the demi-god, Authority, Make us pay down for our offense by weight, - The words of Heaven; - on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just. — William Shakespeare

So I might have to marry Alec when I'm grown," Illia was prattling across to Seregil. "I hope that won't hurt your feelings too much."
Seregil slapped a hand over his heart like a troubadour in a mural. "Ah, fair maiden, I shall slay a thousand evil dragons for you, and lay their steaming black livers at your dainty feet, if only you will restore me to your favor."
"Livers!" Illia buried her face against Alec's shoulder with an outraged giggle.
"You wouldn't bring me livers, would you, Alec?"
"Of course not," Alec scoffed. "What a disgusting present. I'd bring you the eyeballs for a necklace, and all their scaly pointed tongues to tie your braids with. — Lynn Flewelling

I'm urgin all daughters to kiss their mothers with those lips that all that lipstick covers. You never too grown up to miss and hug her. — Drake

As someone who has grown up living in Southern California, I know all too well about the costs and scarcities of water. — Ed Begley Jr.

Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, for not being willing to sacrifice words for desire. Struck by writing a book that disrupts. There are many ways to be hit. Pain is the price we pay to speak the truth. — Bell Hooks

Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret. — Catherynne M Valente

Why do movies make this look so simple?" He leaned back and looked her straight in the eye, the smile winning. "One-handed bra removal is not easy. I call false reality."
"Teen boys all over the world are going to hate themselves for not being able to do it."
"Grown men, too."
"Don't forget Irish men." Melody readjusted herself and sat up straighter. "Declan?" she whispered, tipping her face toward his. Then she ran her tongue over his mouth and pinned his other hand against his side. "I don't want you to hate yourself. Don't give up. You've got this. — Brooklyn Skye

The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old stories and are drawn to the newest gadgets, computers, or video games. They no longer believe in monsters of magic. As cities grown and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we."
"What can we do to stop it?" I whispered.
"Nothing." Grimalkin raised a hind leg and scratched an ear. "Maybe the Nevenever will hold out till the end of the world. Maybe it will disappear in a few centuries. Everything dies eventually, human. — Julie Kagawa

I'm too young at 50. I'm not grown up yet. There's part of everybody like that. — Julie Walters

Toward the end, a band that had a young fellow from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - I remember on account of him saying it two or three times and laughing every time that he did - played a song called 'All She Gets from the Iceman is Ice.' It made the grown folks, most of them anyway, howl laughing. I don't think I ever seen Mama laugh so hard. When it was about over, the sheriff come up and made them stop playing it, but he was grinning, too, so I figured he was just making them stop as part of the show. — Eddie Whitlock

No, no, no, I've just grown up too much to be hurt by what people's opinion of my love life is. — Angelina Jolie

Charles, mate, you fret too much. I'm a grown man, I am, and I can blood my handle."
"Handle your blood?" Bones offered dryly.
Ian grinned. "Exactly. — Jeaniene Frost

I didn't want to be in love with you. I didn't want to believe in love at all. It's never happened to me before. And to be perfectly frank, I'm still not entirely happy about the whole thing. I think - it's going to be exhausting. You're domineering and devious and I've noticed that whenever we're not kissing, I wish we were." Her voice had grown nearly plaintive; she stopped and cleared her throat. "It's a damnable situation. I don't know what to do about it."
He eyed her from the chair. "I'm pigheaded, too. Pray don't forget that."
"Certainly not. It was the next thing I was going to mention."
"My sweet, your notion of love is unique, to say the least. I wonder that you haven't written me sonnets already. Something like 'Ode to the Blackguard. — Shana Abe

What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck, and every man showed himself in his true colours. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I have always loved fairy tales, even now at the age when I am supposed to be too grown up and cynical for them. — Claire Wong

-"Do you know what it's like to be condemned to love?"
-"But isn't it always like that?" Svetlana asked, trembling with indignation. "When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny!"
Once again I sensed that infinitely naive girl in her, the girl who couldn't hate anything except herself. The girl who was already beginning to disappear.
-"No, Sveta, haven't you ever heard love compared to a flower?"
-"Yes."
-"A flower can be grown, Sveta. But it can be bought too, or given as a gift."
-"Did Anton buy it?"
-"No," I said, a bit too sharply. "It was a gift. From destiny."
-"What difference does that make? If it is love?"
-"Sveta, cut flowers are beautiful, but they don't live for long. They're already dying, even the ones that are carefully placed in a crystal vase and given fresh water. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Exactly. We know that the great Goethe carried a copy of Spinoza's Ethics in his pocket for a year. Imagine that - an entire year! And not only Goethe but many other great Germans. Lessing and Heine reported a clarity and calmness that came from reading this book. Who knows, there may come a time in your life when you, too, will need the calmness and clarity that Spinoza's Ethics offers. I shan't ask you to read that book now. You're too young to grasp its meaning. But I want you to promise that before your twenty-first birthday you will read it. Or perhaps I should say, read it by the time you're fully grown. Do I have your word as a good German? — Irvin D. Yalom

I think it'll be interesting. The Aborigines certainly are, Lizabeth said. They have a tradition called the walkabout. It's a challenge for boys when they come of age. I don't know about the girls-the book didn't say. And grown men walkabout, too, when they're troubled.
What's a walkabout?
The book said it's to find your true self, but I don't really know what that means Lizabeth said. — Erika Tamar

We wouldn't even have wars, if adults followed the rules they learned as children. A four-year old would be able to see how foolish grown men are behaving if you explained the war in child's terms. A boy named Germany started causing problems all over the playground that included beating up a girl named Belgium on his way to hurt a kid named France. Then England tried to beat up Germany to help France and Belgium, and when that didn't work, they called over a kid named America, and people started pounding on him, too. — Cat Winters

I'm sure the red fern has grown and has completely covered the two little mounds. I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn't be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too.
Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern. — Wilson Rawls

Nobody took me too seriously but I was grown up even as a baby. — Sharon Stone

I am & have been for years a confirmed anti-vaccinationist. Anti-vaccination has no backing from the orthodox medical opinion. A medical man who expresses himself against vaccination loses caste. Tremendous pecuniary interests too have grown around vaccination. — Mahatma Gandhi

My grandma actually put me in girdles when I was around nine or ten because I had hips even then, and she didn't want boys to be attracted to me. Having hips meant you were a full-grown woman, and I was too young for that. — Coco Austin

Who told you you couldn't come back when you're grown? Was it the same person who told you grown-ups don't cry or blush or clap their hands when they're happy? Don't try to say otherwise, I've seen you fighting like a boxer to change your face so that it never shows anything. Whoever told you that's what growing up means is a villain, as true as a mustache. I am growing up, too, and look at me! I cry and I blush and I live in Fairyland always! — Catherynne M Valente

I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater," said [Sherlock] Holmes. "I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP's, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament. — Dan Simmons

One more impression I gathered from that work of my boyhood, an impression which I did not formulate till afterward, and which will probably astonish many a reader. It is the spirit of equality which is highly developed in the Russian peasant, and in fact in the rural population everywhere. The Russian peasant is capable of much servile obedience to the landlord and the police officer; he will bend before their will in a servile manner; but he does not consider them superior men, and if the next moment that same landlord or officer talks to the same peasant about hay or ducks, the latter will reply to him as an equal to an equal. I never saw in a Russian peasant that servility, grown to be a second nature, with which a small functionary talks to one of high rank, or a valet to his master. The peasant too easily submits to force, but he does not worship it. — Pyotr Kropotkin

My hair has always grown in all directions and my teeth too and my beard. My nerves and my soul must surely grow in the same way. That is what makes me incomprehensible to those who grow all in one direction and are incapable of imagining a hay-stack. It is this that baffles those who could rid me of this legendary leprosy. They do not know how to take me.
This organic disorder is a safeguard for me because it keeps the thoughtless at distance. I also get certain advantages from it. It gives me diversity, contrast, a quickness in leaning to one side or the other as this or that object invites me, and in regaining my balance. — Jean Cocteau

He had grown so accustomed to feeling tired that he took a certain pleasure in it, the pleasure of someone who has given up, the pleasure of someone who, when the moment of truth arrives, turns back the clock and says: "It's too early." The pleasure of self-sacrifice. But sacrifice is only complete when it is kept hidden from view; making it visible is tantamount to saying, "Look at me, look how self-sacrificing I am," and making sure that the other people don't forget it. Therefore he had not yet given up entirely, and behind his resignation hope still lingered, just as the blue sky is always there behind the clouds. — Jose Saramago

Imagine that you're an extremely modern car, equipped with a greater number of options and functions than most cars. You're faster and higher performance. You're very lucky. But it's not easy. Because no one knows exactly the number of options you have or what they enable you to do. Only you can know. And speed can be dangerous. Like when you're eight, you don't know how to drive. There are many things you have to learn: how to drive when it's wet, when it's snowy, to look out for other cars and respect them, to rest when you've been driving for too long. That's what it means to be a grown up.' I'm thirteen and I can see that I'm not managing to grow up in the right way: I can't understand the road signs, I'm not in control of my vehicle, I keep taking the wrong turnings and most of the time I feel like I'm stuck on the dodgems rather than on a race track. — Delphine De Vigan

By doing that and being very competitive, the grown-ups started telling me even back before I started playing organized ball that I was too physical and too advanced for the kids my own age. — Bo Jackson

Can I blame them? they're sick with fear. We've grown too entrenched here, too entwined. Too immersed in the beating heart of this city, this country, this region, We've grown heavy and fat on our our wealth, collective power. We've become addicted to our influence, our mystique. And it's all a myth. An illusion. A crystal tower, standing on sand. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

Attacking a provincial lord in his manor house, surrounded by guards ... Honestly, Kell, I'd nearly forgotten how foolhardy you can be.
"Foolhardy?" Kelsier asked with a laugh. "that wasn't foolhardy - that was just a small diversion. You should see some of the things I'm planning to do!
Dockson stood for a moment then he laughed too. "By the Lord Ruler, it's good to have you back, kell! I'm afraid I've grown rather boring during the last few years"
"We'll fix that" Kelsier promised. — Brandon Sanderson

She looked up. "What I can't figure out is why the good things always end." "Everything ends." "Not some things. Not the bad things. They never go away." "Yes, they do. If you let them, they go away. Not as fast as we'd like sometimes, but they end too. What doesn't end is the way we feel about each other. Even when you're all grown up and somewhere else, you can remember what a good time we had together. Even when you're in the middle of bad things and they never seem to be changing, you can remember me. And I'll remember you. — Torey L. Hayden

His expression turns tender. "I fucking adore you." God, my heart. I can't take it. I trace the curve of his eyebrow. "You've grown on me too, Mannus." "I'm like fungus that way," he agrees happily. — Kristen Callihan

Desert Pools
I love too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.
His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.
And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire. — Sara Teasdale

My first real awareness of Chechnya came when I was a college student studying in Russia. I arrived in St. Petersburg about two months after Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated for her reports on Chechnya. I lived with an elderly woman and her grown children in an apartment that was not too far from the neighborhood military cadet school. — Anthony Marra

We have come to a parting of the ways,I suppose",said Anne thoughtfully."we had to come to it,do you think,Diana,that being grown up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we were children?"
"I don't know-there are SOME nice things about it,"answered Diana,again caressing her ring with that little smile which always had the effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and inexperienced."But there are so many puzzling things,too.Sometimes I feel as if being grown-up just frightened me-and then I would give anything to be a little girl again. — L.M. Montgomery

It is not, Dear, because I am alone, For I am lonelier when the rest are near, But that my place against your heart has grown Too dear to dream of when you are not here. — E. Nesbit

Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. "'tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King's dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established." Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. "We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer 'tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed." And — H.W. Brands

I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself
that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect. — Haruki Murakami

I love you, Alexa. I want you and I want our baby. I want this ridiculous hound dog because I've grown to love him, too. I also figured out what I don't want. I don't want to live my life without you. I don't want to be alone anymore. And I don't want to believe I deserve not to have you. And I swear to God, I'll spend the rest of my life making this up to you. - Nicholas Ryan — Jennifer Probst

Maybe I am getting too grown to want to sleep with Mama. But like a baby, I still have this smallness to my mind. I don't need her hands to convince me the world I can't see from under my blanket is real. I need her hands to do more than her words. Convince me the world I see outside it- ain't. — Connie Rose Porter

I've had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered that as a group these awkward half children take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form of play-acting. The adolescent knows that the child is lurking under the surface, but he'd sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so intent on being "grown-up" that I simply couldn't relax and enjoy life.
Most people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many, however, do not. The pose becomes more important than reality, and these poor creatures become hollow people, forever striving to fit themselves into an impossible mold. — David Eddings

I'd love to cook. It's something I've got into since I've grown older. I'm mates with Jamie Oliver and he's been a real inspiration. I've cooked for Jamie a few times - most people are too frightened to cook for him. Chefs are really easy to cook for. They're just pleased not to be the one who's cooking. — Jason Flemyng

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ... Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting. — Bell Hooks

Jesse must have heard me because she stuck her head out of her bedroom and then rushed over. "Can I help?"
I looked down to see what caused the consternation in her face. It wasn't my nakedness. She'd grown up with werewolves, and shapeshifters can't afford too much modesty. [ ... ]
No, it wasn't my nakedness; it was the blood. I was covered with it.
Appalled, I looked behind me at the carpet that was stained with my blood all the way up the stairs. "Darn it," I said. "That's going to be expensive to clean. — Patricia Briggs

I was pretty new to the Broadway world once I began working in it. I hadn't really grown up being too aware of that many shows or that many actors in shows. I was always obsessed with Judy Garland, though. — Jennifer Damiano

I don't love him, period. I didn't love him before this. I cared about him. And I wanted to love him. Maybe I could have grown to love him. But those feelings just weren't there. I liked the idea of him. It was exciting. He was exciting. Too exciting. — Emily Giffin

I understood that ideal conversations move in widening spirals, starting with the minute then building toward statements of greater importance. The problem, however, is that conversations too often stay flat. It is distressing how often we repeat ourselves. When we ask questions, we know the answers already. We've grown accustomed to horizontal communication, flatlining banalities and droning insignificance. — Louisa Hall

You are always dragging me down,' said I to my Body. 'Dragging _you_ down!' replied my Body. 'Well I like that! Who taught me to like tobacco and alcohol? You, of course, with your idiotic adolescent idea of being "grown up". My palate loathed both at first: but you would have your way. Who put an end to all those angry and revengeful thoughts last night? Me, of course, by insisting on going to sleep. Who does his best to keep you from talking too much and eating too much by giving you dry throats and headaches and indigestion? Eh?' 'And what about sex?' said I. 'Yes, what about it?' retorted the Body. 'If you and your wretched imagination would leave me alone I'd give you no trouble. That's Soul all over; you give me orders and then blame me for carrying them out. — C.S. Lewis

I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. — George MacDonald

So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher

It is for that moment when I might steady you so you don't fall, I have added my blood to an inkwell. Indelible now will be my mark on history's canvas and upon any sincere debate of God where reason finally prevails. And when you have the strength, you too may find another to hold up. They lean against each other in a storm, those cypresses grown tall together ... through the years. If they had not trusted and protected one another the way they do, they would not have survived and given us their grace and shade - a place for our eyes to meet. Our friendship can be like this: a needed lift, a sail, a pillar, a springboard to taste the unfathomable. It is to tend you as you come into being, like a new world, that causes me to stay, gives me a purpose. Of course I thank you for that ... for letting me help. — Rumi

Wolverine is a world-weary old warrior. His rage issue notwithstanding, I see him as someone with the tortured soul of a poet, but one who has seen too many friends and lovers die. Even with that, he has grown into a leader and a true hero. — Jonathan Maberry

His father asked Ethan in a raspy voice, "You spend time with your son?" "Much as I can," he'd answered, but his father had caught the lie in his eyes. "It'll be your loss, Ethan. Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here." Ethan thinks often of that conversation, mostly when he's lying awake in bed at night and everyone else is asleep, and his life screaming past at the speed of light - the weight of bills and the future and his prior failings and all these moments he's missing - all the lost joy - perched like a boulder on his chest. — Blake Crouch

The world has grown too large for one army of the nation, my brother. You will ride where I tell you to ride, conquer where I tell you to conquer. The world is yours, if you can put aside the base part of you that tells you to rule it all. That you may not have. Now give me an answer and your oath. Your word is iron, brother, and I will take it. Or I can just kill you now. — Conn Iggulden

For a little while, I actually feel grown-up and responsible. I strut around with my head held high, looking the other responsible people in the eye with that knowing glance that says, I understand. I'm responsible now too. Just look at my groceries. — Allie Brosh

Basically there's just so much stuff flowing past on the internet now, you have to let most of it go. And I've grown accustomed to the process of not worrying too much about the stuff I'm not getting to, because the important stuff will come back around. — Larry Wall

Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. — Oscar Wilde

I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.
And yet there's nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they're adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. 'Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is' is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children. — Muriel Barbery

If just for one week in the South would show them some simple, impartial courtesy. I wonder what would happen. Do you think it'd give 'em airs or the beginnings of self-respect? Have you ever been snubbed, Atticus? Do you know how it feels? No, don't tell me they're children and don't feel it: I was a child and felt it, so grown children must feel, too. A real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you're too nasty to associate with people. How they're as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they are human. I wonder what kind of miracle we could work with a week's decency. — Harper Lee

I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

So when it came to making the movie I guess I had a really good sense innately of what it was that makes Halloween really great. In that it is a holiday for everybody now. When I was a kid I felt like it was mostly for kids, maybe that's just the way it always is when you're a kid, but I think now more than ever it's for grown ups too. When I was a kid I don't think there were quite as many sexy adult costumes and we definitely didn't have all these Spirit Halloween stores that pop up every October. — Michael Dougherty

Well, anyway, when I am grown up," said Anne decidedly, "I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one's feelings. — L.M. Montgomery

Nice dress Zoey. It looks just like mine. Oh, wait! It used to be mine.
Aphrodite laughed a throaty, I'm-so-grown-and-you're-just-a-kid laugh.
I really hate it when girls do that.I mean, yes, she's older, but I have boobs, too. — P.C. Cast

He smiled slowly, as if particularly pleased with her question, and she couldn't help smiling in return. He reached around her, his arms nearly embracing her, and wrote in the notebook on her lap, Very good. Yes, the root ball should be quite big, even so. "Should be?" His breath was warm against her ear. I confess. I've never attempted to transplant a fully grown tree. I shall do so, however, this afternoon. Would you like to watch? If someone had asked her a fortnight ago if she'd like to watch a tree being planted, she would've looked at the questioner quite pityingly. But right now, this moment, she was rather excited at the prospect. Perhaps too many viewings of Caliban's nude chest had addled her brain. In any case she gazed into his thickly lashed brown eyes and smiled brilliantly. "Yes, please." His grin was quick and all-encompassing and, she couldn't help but think, solely for her. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I have spent a lifetime looking for remedies to all manner of life's problems
personal, social, political, global. I am deeply suspicious of those who offer simple solutions and statements of absolute certainty or who claim full possession of the truth. Yet I have grown equally skeptical of those who suggest that all is too nuanced and complex for us to learn any lessons, that there are so many sides to every thing that we can pursue knowledge every day of our lives and still know nothing for sure. I believe we can recognize truth when we see it, just not a first and not without ever relenting in our efforts to learn more. This is because the goal we seek, and the good we hope for, comes not as some final reward but as the hidden companion to our quest. It is not what we find, but the reason we cannot stop looking and striving, that tells us why we are here. — Madeleine K. Albright

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages ... the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide ... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. — Madeleine L'Engle

I would carry you on my shoulders so you could see better. I used to think to myself, I will do whatever it takes to be able to carry you forever. I will join a gym. I will lift weights. I will never let on that you've grown too big for this, that you've gotten too heavy. It never occurred to me that one day you might ask to walk on your own. — Jodi Picoult

The Reed Flute's Work
I say to the reed flute, You do the work,
yet you know sweet secrets too.
You share the Friend's breathing.
What could you need from me?
The reed replies, Knowledge is total
destruction. I say, Burn me completely then
and leave no knowing.
How could I, when it's knowledge that leads us?
But this knowledge has lost compassion
and grown disgusted with itself.
It has forgotten about silence and emptiness.
A reed flute has nine holes
and is a model of human consciousness,
beheaded, though still in love with lips.
This is your disgrace, this moaning.
Weep for the sounds you make. — Rumi

As human beings in general ... I don't think we've grown that much. Technology wise, we are getting too intelligent for our own good. — Butterfly Boucher

Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back. I've had a long talk with a Catholic-a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this, but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself. — Evelyn Waugh

You're correct that I've never experienced poverty, but you've never experienced a man you've grown up with for 20 years, more brother than friend, try to assassinate you because another man wanted what was yours. You've never had your older sister gouge you in the leg with a throwing star and try to end your life. You've never had to live every day knowing the only thing between you and a body bag is a good bodyguard and the people who would kill you being too afraid of what you'd do if they failed. — Sam Mariano

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

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

The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow — Robert M. Pirsig

And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up. — John Updike

It must be lovely to be grown up, Marilla, when just being treated as if you were is so nice ... Well, anyway, when I grow up, I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were, too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. — L.M. Montgomery

I am here because I am the one that must love Peter so much that he can feel worthy, worthy enough to bear to let the goodness of Young Valentine flow into him, making him whole, making him Ender. Not Ender the Xenocide and Andrew the Speaker for the Dead, guilt and compassion mingled in one shattered, broken, unmendable heart, but Ender Wiggin the four-year-old boy whose life was twisted and broken when he was too young to defend himself. Wang-mu was the one who could give Peter permission to become the man that child should have grown up to be, if the world had been good. — Orson Scott Card