Quotes & Sayings About Me Growing Up

Weston: Look at my outlook. You don't envy it, right?
Wesley: No.
Weston: That's because it's full of poison. Infected. And you recognize poison, right? You recognize it when you see it?
Wesley: Yes.
Weston: Yes, you do. I can see that you do. My poison scares you.
Wesley: Doesn't scare me.
Weston: No?
Wesley: No.
Weston: Good. You're growing up. I never saw my old man's poison until I was much older than you. Much older. And then you know how I recognized it?
Wesley: How?
Weston: Because I saw myself infected with it. That's how. I saw me carrying it around. His poison in my body. — Sam Shepard

Nobody told me that growing up goes slow. — Nina Ardianti

My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever. — Chris Isaak

Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't ( ... ) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories. — Douglas Coupland

I became a novelist because of 'Gone With the Wind,' or more precisely, my mother raised me up to be a 'Southern' novelist, with a strong emphasis on the word 'Southern' because 'Gone With the Wind' set my mother's imagination ablaze when she was a young girl growing up in Atlanta. — Pat Conroy

For all her faults, it was actually my mom who instilled in me a love of reading, and books, for which I will always be grateful. She's a complete bibliophile, so I've pretty much grown up around libraries and books. — Paula Gruben

Growing up in New Orleans helped me live a real life. I experienced so many things. — Jason Mitchell

When you grow up in that (multi-ethnic) environment, you see the world differently. Being a mixed-race child, I didn't always see colour in people, I really didn't. It was other people that made me see the colour all the time. — Halle Berry

Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened. — Roma Downey

Growing up in Dumfries, I got no sun - I spent all my time in my room making records. When I came to America, it made me recognise the benefits of sunlight. Oh, and I also got a good haircut. I used to have a terrible haircut. — Calvin Harris

Music has always been in my family down to my dad through my uncle. I'm just the next generation, since it's always been around me when I was younger when I looked up to my mom and dad, to Michael Jackson, and B2K was my favorite band growing up. — Jacob Latimore

Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny. — Jenny Mollen

My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist. — Leila Janah

I'm very lucky that I have people styling my hair and teaching me how to work with it, but it wasn't always like that. Growing up, I had extremely wavy and thick hair and that can be very overwhelming - you end up with the same ponytail every day. — Crystal Renn

My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career. — Michael Emerson

Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be a ninja. In martial arts, even though I did Chinese kung fu, I always wanted to be this secret samurai or a ninja. There's something about ninjas that was very appealing to me as a kid. So of course, I was climbing a lot of trees and other things and getting up to mischief - good mischief. — Ray Park

You know, people ask me. They say 'Dan, three years later do you really want to be drawing cat whiskers on your face?' but they don't understand. The cat whiskers, they come from within. — Dan Howell

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up. — St. Lucia

I've grown up with kids watching me and as they're growing up, I'm growing up. — Amanda Bynes

I've always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident. — Rei Kawakubo

That night marks my life's dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. The wonder to me now is that I thought myself worth saving ... I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom. — Barbara Kingsolver

It's usually my mom who gets on me about my facial hair. I can't grow a good mustache, so I guess it's just a neck beard. I just have trouble growing up there. — Andrew Luck

People in London are so much more exposed to danger, or bad things. It took me quite a long time to grow up in that environment. — Eliot Paulina Sumner

Growing up, I had a very busy social life. It wasn't until I was a sophomore in high school that I asked Mama if I could come into the kitchen and have her teach me how to cook something. — Paula Deen

I didn't really have an interest in politics when I first entered the workforce. What I wanted to do was help people who grew up like me. When I was a kid growing up in Tucson, my father lost his job and we lost everything - including our home. We lived in an abandoned gas station for two years until we were able to get back on our feet. — Kyrsten Sinema

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

Some of the worst things that have happened in my career, like things getting leaked, have actually been what's best for me, because people knew when I was on that show that I was really growing up. — Miley Cyrus

-When I was growing up, Lieutenant Uhura was a major role model for me, a strong black woman on the bridge of a starship ...
-In a miniskirt, answering the interplanetary telephone? — Suzanne Brockmann

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

People when they're growing up they just want to fit in, there are a lot of social pressures on young people today to kind of have it all figured out and know what they want to do, know who they are straight away and I've always tried to embrace that sense of pressure, but I've got people around me that do as well. — Joshua James Alphonse Franceschi

I had the wonderful benefit of growing up with parents that not only encouraged me to follow my dreams, but supported my aspirations through school and beyond. — Jason Graves

I wanted to be an actor because it gave me the opportunity to express myself in ways I wasn't comfortable expressing myself, as a kid growing up in St. Louis. — Scott Bakula

My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again. — Salman Rushdie

For me, growing up in a ridiculously poor family living in dead-end neighborhoods, Superman was a deeply personal icon, one that said you can do anything if you put your mind to it. What he stood for formed the core of who I wanted to be as I grew up, and informed how I view the world and my responsibilities to other people. — J. Michael Straczynski

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

Comic books and The Chronicles of Narnia. My mother used to read those to me and my twin brother growing up. — Shawn Ashmore

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. — Salman Rushdie

As I got older, I got into all kinds of things in the streets - but for some reason, I never got caught up with the gangs growing up. Everybody dug me, man. I never had problems. — Bernie Mac

No, 'Point Break' for me - growing up on the beaches of Sydney as a surfer, it was kind of the movie that we watched every week. For me to be Johnny Utah, I'm beside myself. — Luke Bracey

When we sat down in the plane, Clare took something out of her pocket and handed it to me. It looked like a tube of lipstick.
I frowned at her. 'Is this really the time to swap make-up?' I asked.
She grinned. 'It's a hand taser. My parents make me carry one.' She took the cap off and pointed to the metal edge. 'If someone attacks you, you press the tip against their skin and it shoots out a charge.'
I looked down at it. 'Does it last long?'
She shook her head. 'It's pretty harmless. Noah and Pat used to play taser tag around the house when I was growing up. — Katie Kacvinsky

No one grows up. That's one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don't want to be in ... and they make the best of it. But don't try to tell me it's some kind of ... glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It's not. — Greg Egan

[Winning an Oscar] was a beautiful thing that happened. It is in my house, and every time I look at, I see all the people who are a part of it, all the people who gave me opportunities to work, gave me opportunities to make a living at this thing [acting] that was a dream for me, growing up. And I got to do it, and then again and again and again, and make a living out of being an actress. — Penelope Cruz

There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,' Harry recounted.
'He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted "buttfucker" then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I've always wondered why I hated him so much.'
'People are afraid of what they don't understand. And hate what they're afraid of. — Jo Nesbo

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up. — Debra Wilson

That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits. — Dan Auerbach

My mom didn't let me play video games growing up, so now I do. Gaming gives me a chance to just let go, blow somebody up and fight somebody from another dimension. It's all escapism. — Wayne Brady

I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids liked to work with their hands as much as I did. I was an only child so I did have a lot of time to be creative by myself and with my parents. — Wendy Froud

As a child, growing up in Hampstead, North London, I was shockingly fair-skinned. Holidays involved me spending the second and third day face-down on a bed, shrieking should anyone touch my blistered skin. — Jane Green

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper. — Junot Diaz

Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it. I was going to be a lawyer, but I got saved. — Alan Dean Foster

Well people often ask me how I felt growing up with a father who was a politician and who was often away. But when I'm asked that question I often reflect on my inability really to be able to answer it in any relative sense because I never grew up with a father doing anything else. So I just have no idea what it would be like otherwise. — Alexander Downer

The realization that my parents, too, felt pain and fear frightened me more than any strangers could. — Sara Novic

I knew nothing but love and devotion when I was growing up. Trust me, it makes everything easier. — Julia Quinn

I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns. — Rick Gonzalez

I started growing up in a hurry and taking a lot of the philosophy I'd heard from church as a kid a lot more seriously - especially the Ten Commandments - and wondering how 'Thou shalt not kill' could be so absolutely ignored. It took me until I was in my 40s to write what I was thinking as a young soldier. — Dave Brubeck

When we were kids, growing up in the sixties, the only images we had of ourselves were either still photographs or 8mm movies ... Now we have video, digital cameras, MP3s, and a million other ways to document ourselves. But the still photograph continues to hold a sense of mystery and awe to me. — Catherine Opie

Growing up, my two favorite books were Woody Allen's 'Side Effects' and Phyllis Diller's 'Housekeeping Hints.' I carried that Phyllis Diller book with me everywhere when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Eventually, it just fell apart. — Jill Davis

Growing up my whole life, my mom was telling me how incredible and special I was and that I was going to change the world. I think it's important for girls to know that they can change the world, that they do have an impact. — Ashley Greene

You dont grow up in a town of 700 thinking youre going to be an actress. I loved doing [school] plays, but it was just something to keep me busy. — Michelle Monaghan

Especially for me, growing up in such a small town in the middle of nowhere, the desire to be away was incredible. I wanted to see new lands, meet new people from the city, and meet people that were in much less fortunate situations than I was, so that I could be more appreciative of my present. At least I had food on the table. — Garrett Hedlund

I've been very blessed. My parents always told me I could be anything I wanted. When you grow up in a household like that, you learn to believe in yourself. — Ricky Schroder

What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d'Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven. — Giacomino Nicolazzo

We think we have to prove our allegiance to God by being poor. Many years ago, my own psychic development teacher taught me that to be on a spiritual path meant that you needed to be poor, because that was proving your allegiance to God. So growing up with that kind of teaching from her was a real struggle for me, also. — Echo Bodine

Most times a person grows up gradually, but I found myself in a hurry ... Hoping to find an answer, I uncovered an article about the common goldfish. "Kept in a small bowl, the goldfish will remain small. With more space, the fish will double, triple, or quadruple in size." It occurred to me then that I was intended for larger things. After all, a giant man can't have an ordinary-sized life. — John August

I was a tomboy growing up and then fell into the world of theatre and musical theatre. A girlfriend introduced me to yoga in college and I was hooked. I didn't really know anything about it except that it was the highlight of my week. I ended up graduating from the University of Virginia and moving to Los Angeles where I could continue acting and do a yoga teacher training. I went from practicing once or twice a week to several hours everyday. I loved it. — Kathryn Budig

Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, 'Oh, that's me.' — Cary Fukunaga

My mom's best friend growing up was diagnosed with AIDS, and he basically raised me when my mom was launching her business. Although I didn't understand at the time what HIV or AIDS was, I knew that's what he passed away from. — Solange Knowles

I'm all about unity and loving your neighbor ... If somebody told me when I was growing up that the music I was listening to was stupid, and I listened to them, I wouldn't be where I am today. — Drake Bell

The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand - ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. "Wake up," it says. "I'm still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I'm still here." The kicking never hurts me. There's no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. — Haruki Murakami

Part of what was in the ether all around me growing up, until I was between 19 and 20, was a terrible, debilitating stutter. It was part of what made me very reclusive as a kid. — Tim Gunn

I wanted to be a painter, really, when I was growing up as a kid. It was one thing that really took a grip on me. — Andy Serkis

The military infrastructure grew me. My faith in God is important, my belief in my country is important, my relationship to my family is important, the things that Mom and Dad tell you growing up are important. — Tommy Franks

I don't speak French, but I took it for five years growing up. So, if I were in a situation where I had to be, like, 'Excuse me, pineapple dog house red, what time is it library?' - no problem. — Eugene Mirman

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

The shelf life of my own opinion is somewhere between 3 seconds to 3 months, especially when it is about life and its meaning!
... But my recorded opinions definitely reflect my growing up for me, sometimes we do grow up in 3 seconds after we express something! ... yes we do! — Madura Aka Tirunelveli Tamizhachchi

For me, growing up, the downside of it was that as a kid you don't want to stand out. You don't want to have a famous father let alone get a job because of your famous father, you know? But I'm a product of nepotism. That's how I got my foot in the door, through my dad. — Jeff Bridges

Anybody who gives away money is mostly looking at things where they think they can make a difference. I'm trying to help people who helped me, educational institutions that helped me with scholarships, or organizations that were very useful to me in growing up. — David Rubenstein

I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up. — Michael Shannon

Oh maturity's a wrapped up package deal so it seems
And ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams
All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will
Have to grow up be an adult yeah be bored and unfulfilled
Oh when no ones yet explained to me exactly what's so great
About slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity
Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me. — Frank Turner

My whole life growing up, both my parents told me not to swear like a sailor. After college, I recall there was finally a time where I swore, and neither one of them was correcting me, and I felt so relieved. I thought, finally; I can finally be myself and not get yelled at. — Rory Freedman

You look like trouble. When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me to never trust a redhead. — Tarryn Fisher

Are you conscious of a growing failure of your bodily powers? Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. Are the eyes growing dim? Jesus will be your light. Do the ears fail you? Jesus' name will be your soul's best music, and His person your dear delight. Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. In Thee, my God, my heart shall triumph, come what may of ills without! By thy power, O blessed Spirit, my heart shall be exceeding glad, though all things should fail me here below. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday. — Peter Fonda

I don't know what I could say specifically, except that everything I've learned as a kid of course must somehow play into what I do now. I think when everything kind of drifted away, I had to go out into the world and learn how to emotionally be okay with all that, which to me was a decades-long process. But also I happened to find my way in life, to find a living, to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think all of that now probably helps me. It probably gives me more life experience to draw from. — Jackie Earle Haley

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a child
I am twelve-and-a-half years old
but it still isn't fair. If I go into a store to buy something, nobody pays any attention to me, or if they do, it's to say, "Leave that alone," "Don't touch that," although I haven't done anything. My money is as good as anybody's, but because I am younger, they feel they can be mean to me. It happens to me at home, too. My mother's friend who comes over after dinner sometimes, who doesn't have any children of her own and doesn't know what's what, likes to say to me, "Shouldn't you be in bed by now,dear?" when she doesn't even know what my bedtime is supposed to be. Is there any way I can make these people stop?
GENTLE READER:
Growing up is the best revenge. — Judith Martin

I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again. — Annie Baker

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire. — Annie Dillard

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Hand, nobody told me about the weight. Why didn't our parents tell us about the weight?
- What weight?
- The fucking weight, Hand. How does the woman Ingres live? The one from Marrakesh? If we're vessels, and we are, then we, you and I, are overfull, and that means she's at the bottom of a deep cold lake. How can she stand the hissing of all that water?
- We are not vessels; we are missiles.
- We're static and we're empty. We are overfull and leaden.
- We are airtight and we are missiles and all-powerful. — Dave Eggers

'Wonder Woman' was on TV when I was growing up, and I knew Lynda Carter was part Latina. It gave me a great sense of pride. — Constance Marie

When I woke up later, I had established all these businesses and we were growing and everything was going well and I was miserable because I was chasing money and not happiness. I decided that day in August that I would quit chasing money and start chasing passion and allow the money to grow around me ... I wanted to have passion in my life to show my girls to live by passion. — Drew Waters

Anybody who knows me knows I'm passionate about American football. I gave this game everything I had. In college, that's what I looked to do. Everything. Everything for so long, and all you hear growing up is that hard work pays off, hard work pays off, hard work pays off. — La'el Collins

Mark raised his eyebrows, 'you don't know the half of it,' he further mumbled, more to himself than in reply to Frankie. 'But listen up; because this isn't about me anyway; this is about you, about how you need to sort it out, yeah? This is all about you getting yourself a girl, and settling down, right?'

Frankie offered up a wistful kind of sigh, supping his pint as those heavily suggestive words immediately grated: settle down and never settle up. — Tom Conrad

You can't make me be nice.
You can't make me be good.
You can't make me believe.
But your example, your kindness, your patience and love will affect me perhaps enough that eventually I may choose to do those things. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I love my country, and the mental and physical demands of the Navy SEALs was what I had been training for my whole life growing up in Montana. There's a reason Montana produces more SEALs than any other state. As a collegiate athlete, I enjoyed the mental and physical challenges Division I football presented. When a recruiter first told me about the Navy SEALs, I knew it was the right fit. — Ryan Zinke

They both looked at me in a way that was fast becoming familiar: two parts bafflement to one part awe at my talent for making a bad situation worse. — David Bennun

Mum and Dad were very much friends and up for life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up; they just taught me to be me. — Kate Winslet

Because we had no money when I was growing up, when I started dancing, I wasn't allowed to be frivolous - my mum made me go to every lesson because she was paying for it. — Anton Du Beke

Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that. — Jeff Lemire

Many of Judy Blume's books - which I devoured when I was growing up and where I found characters that were believable because they were a lot like me - caused considerable consternation when they were first published, but now they're widely accepted as an essential part of the children's literary canon. — Jeff Kinney