The Place I Grow Up Quotes & Sayings

Chicago is an extremely rough place to grow up in. Especially if you're the only brother on the block that's into bumpin' Alanis Morrisette ... So 'You Oughta Know,' I moved to Oregon. — Ron Funches

That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife, and how, in the barber's chair that morning, I had made up my mind to go. I was thinking today about the calm I felt when I closed my eyes and let the barber's fingers move through my hair, the sweetness of those fingers, the hair already starting to grow. — Raymond Carver

I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? — Haruki Murakami

Very good training to just be a person is growing up in Canada. People say a lot of things about Canada, like that it's boring, but if you look around the world, you can praise boring. It's a very civilized place to grow up. I'm very proud of it. — Mike Myers

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. — Cheryl Strayed

She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.
"Okay, Andrew. But let's leave today. I'm in a hurry."
"Of course. Today." He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. "These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?"
Tally glances up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment's calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. "About a week's walk that way."
"A week?"
"That means seven days."
"Yes, I know the gods' calendar," he said huffily. "But a whole week?"
"Yeah. That's not so far, is it?" The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.
He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. "But that is beyond the edge of the world. — Scott Westerfeld

When you have kids it's nice to have a place where they can always return to and some place where they will grow up in, but I never had that. I'm not attached to things and places. I like that we [the family] keep moving. It's a nomadic life, and I think that's a great life. I'm excited when we take our kids to a new country and they don't just immediately look for the comforts of home. They blend into that country. Send them to any place in the world and they won't be scared. They'll just feel like they can make friends there. — Angelina Jolie

Somehow I've become separated emotionally from everyone and everything. And what I was really searching for out there in the dark streets - the last damned place I could ever find it - was a way to make myself a part of people again emotionally, while still retaining my freedom intellectually. I've got to grow up. For me it means everything. . . . — Daniel Keyes

When we were old enough, Mom felt like she had given us all the tools she could to have happy lives, and she wanted us to do just that. Live. Make our own mythology, not be swallowed up by hers. Live the kind of happy, drama-free, painful and joyful mortal life she couldn't, and at the end of it come home to be ushered into our next life by the two people who brought us here in the first place. I know you think mortality is evidence that they don't care, but giving us the the ability to grow and change and progress and then finish? That was the greatest gift two ageless, eternal, very very stuck gods could think to give the children they love more than anything. — Kiersten White

Twenty years ago I wanted to move to a nice place so our Charley would grow up a nice boy and learn a profession. But instead we live in a jungle, so he can only be a wild animal. D'you think I picked the East Side like Columbus picked America? — Abraham Polonsky

The world is a much bigger place than Bruner middle school. Those kids who make you feel bad? They're never going to know that. They'll grow up here, stay here, get married here, and have kids here. They'll never find out anything more than the petty grievances they're learning to inflict now.

But you, kiddo? You have bigger fishes to fry. I predict great things for you. — Claire Bidwell Smith

I grew up in L.A. I actually grew up in the Valley, which was a pretty amazing place to grow up because everybody has nice, big backyards, and I was kind of a little nature being. — Banks

[London is] one of the best cities in the world. There is just so much culture there and so much history and so much diversity. It's just a perfect place to grow up. I studied at the Guildhall every Saturday so I'd always be in town every weekend doing that. I was kind of a city boy really. — Douglas Booth

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

I walk at night under a moonless sky. Only the terrain guides my steps, yet my footfall is as sure as if a dozen suns lit the way. I go to meet you under a leafless tree that never seems to grow or alter its shape. I am uncertain if it still lives or has learned to disguise its death. The same thought crosses my mind when I feel your cold fingers take my hand. It is not the tree I reflect upon.

'Do you still love me?' The words tumble clumsily out of the dark.

Hesitation is its own answer, but I reply 'I'm here' anyway as if my words were whispered comfort and not a weathered blade. They are taken wrong.

'I love you too.'

Your arms wrap me up and clamp tightly around my waist. An old, familiar kiss hardens my lips. I wonder why it is I return to this place every year where only memories remain fond. Perhaps it is because I keep hoping this leafless tree will either change or die. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of 'Married ... with Children,' which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up. — Meghan Markle

I didn't grow up in a naked household, but nudity was not a taboo thing. My mother was an artist and there were naked sculptures and paintings all over the place. — Ingrid Michaelson

I know that my success comes from hard work, help from others, and being at the right place at the right time. I feel a deep and enduring sense of gratitude to those who have given me opportunities and support. I recognize the sheer luck of being born into my family in the United States rather than one of the many places in the world where women are denied basic rights. I believe that all of us - men and women alike - should acknowledge good fortune and thank the people who have helped us. No one accomplishes anything all alone.
But I also know that in order to continue to grow and challenge myself, I have to believe in my own abilities. I still face situations that I fear are beyond my capabilities. I still have days when I feel like a fraud. And I still sometimes find myself spoken over and discounted while men sitting next to me are not. But now I know how to take a deep breath and keep my hand up. I have learned to sit at the table. — Sheryl Sandberg

I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom. — Rosa Parks

I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Okay, I thought. Here you are. You are here. And you move forward because
that's the way it works; that's the only place u can go. You keep going
until it stops hurting, or until you find new things to hurt you worse, I
guess. And that is the human condition, all of us lurching along in our own private miseries, because that's the way it is. Because, I guess, God didn't give us any choice. You grow up, I remembered Abigail telling me. You learn. — Jennifer Weiner

You know what happens to guys? There's what I call the individual time of their career, and the team time of their career. This is the team time. You don't care about all the other stuff. You just want to live in one place, and watch your kids grow up and go to the same school. You say, 'Hey, maybe I'd better play well and be a good enough guy that they keep me.' — Mike Babcock

There's nothing else in this world the color of a school bus. They call it yellow but it's not quite yellow, and it's not orange either. I'd say it's something somewhere in between margarine and Velveeta. It's not a natural color. Then again I guess if we wanted kids to grow up natural we wouldn't put them on a school bus in the first place. — Jon Clinch

She was coming. I watched the slight figure grow out of the dusk between the trees, and the darkness in which I had walked of late fell away. The wood that had been so gloomy was a place of sunlight and song; had red roses sprung up around me I had felt no wonder. She came softly and slowly with bent head and hanging arms, not knowing that I was near. I went not to meet her - it was my fancy to have her come to me still - but when she raised her eyes and saw me I fell upon my knees. — Mary Johnston

I believe that the world will be a safer place if there is enough food to go around, that it will be a more stable place if children grow up with opportunities instead of frustrations. Furthermore, I can only assume that if the United States plays a role in helping to create prosperous societies, we will have friends to call on in times of need. — Bill Gates

You don't understand." His bulgy eyes are getting moist. "I miss Wonderland. I am like a child who became a scientist, only to learn that all he really wanted was to never grow up in the first place. I wanted to stay in Wonderland. I wanted to find Alice again. — Cameron Jace

adolescent who expresses dissident opinion more or less vocally can end up in a place like that. Some of the children arrive there from orphanages. If a child tries to run away from an orphanage, it is considered normal in our country to commit him to a psychiatric facility and treat him with the strongest of sedatives, such as aminazine, used to suppress Soviet dissidents back in the 1970s. This is particularly shocking considering these institutions' general punitive trend and the absence of psychological help as such. All communication there is based on fear and the children's forced subjugation. They become exponentially more cruel as a result. Many of the children are illiterate, but no one makes an effort to do anything about that. On the contrary, they do everything to quash the last remnants of any motivation to grow. The children shut down and stop trusting words. I — Masha Gessen

The biggest place I look for validation is from my mother. That's the little girl in me that will never grow up. — Naomi Watts

Although I feel very French, a part of my heart is in the States. When my brother and I arrived, we didn't really speak any English, and when we left, that's all we spoke when we played together. It was just a beautiful place to grow up. — Delphine Arnault

I think teenagers in the States grow up too fast. In Canada, kids are exposed to different things. Like school is very different; it's not nearly as social. Canadian teenagers see it as a much more serious place. — Neve Campbell

I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn't a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire - smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while i got dressed for the play, swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold. — Megan Miranda

The difference between growing up like me and growing up like Will was that he wore his sense of entitlement lightly. I think if you grow up as he had done, with wealthy parents, in a nice house, if you go to good schools and nice restaurants as a matter of course, you probably just have this sense that good things will fall into place, that your position in the world is naturally an elevated one. — Jojo Moyes

When I first moved to London, I felt very homesick and yearned after the countryside a lot. Because London's hard. It's a big place, and it's lonely. It takes a while to get into it. But once I got into the flow of it and started to grow up, I realised that my home is wherever I am. — Toby Kebbell

If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said. 'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what the right thing is? Who decides?' 'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. Good metaphor, huh? — Scarlett Thomas

I didn't say, You are such a stuffy asshole. And he didn't say, If you ever burn one of my quarter-of-a-million dollar rugs again I'll take it out of your hide, and I didn't say, Oh, honey, wouldn't you like to? And he didn't say Grow up, Ms. Lane, I don't take little girls to my bed, and I didn't say I wouldn't go there if it was the only safe place from the Lord Master in all of Dublin. — Karen Marie Moning

Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything. — Neil Diamond

It was a great place to grow up. There were always kids around in our neighborhood. We had a basketball hoop in the back of our house, a little front yard where you could get touch football games going. I know you think of it as a big city, but it was fun for me to grow up in New Orleans. I remember it as a very normal childhood. — Eli Manning

A child isn't born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let's just say that when I realized that I didn't want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place to be means that you are grown up enough to notice. And you can't go back from there. You have to forge another route, draw your own map. — Hiromi Goto

I didn't grow up in the typical happy American home, but music was always a safe and wonderful place for me to go. — Chris Isaak

I didn't grow up in one place, so I never had a certain mentality. I have some aspects of growing up in Texas, but I also have a lot of East Coast family. I would have loved to grow up on the East Coast. — Debby Ryan

I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural. — Moby

I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison's paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don't mind the signs of wear and tear. There's a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth ... It's part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve. — Sissy Spacek

You've never been a whiner, Margo."
"I could give lessons.It's time for me to grow up, take responsibility,be sensible."
"Talk to life insurance salesman," Josh said dryly. "Apply for a library card.Clip coupons."
She looked down her nose. "Spoken like a man born with not only a silver spoon but the whole place setting stuck in his arrogant little mouth."
"I happen to have several library cards," he muttered. "Somewhere."
"Do you mind? — Nora Roberts

Much as I resented having to grow up in Des Moines, it gave me a real appreciation for every place in the world that's not Des Moines. — Bill Bryson

I was a very determined kid. I couldn't imagine any other life for myself. This happens to kids who are different in any way. How am I going to make a life? Who am I going to be when I grow up? Will there be a place for me in the world? Acting gave me a sense of purpose, but it also gave me a sense that I would survive, that I would find my place. — Linda Hunt

Home is home wherever you grow up generally speaking. Unless you're one of those people who always wants to get out of a small town and do something bigger with your life, which I always did but I always wanted to come back, so home is home and its a great place for me to come back and escape the hustle and bustle of the life that I live. — Seth Rollins

I want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around. — Tony Blair

I want MIT to be the dream of every child who wants to grow up to make the world a better place. We need to reach those young explorers and bring them with us on the great adventure of discovery and innovation. — Susan Hockfield

I mean, when a man reaches ... a certain age," he tried again, "he knows the world is never going to be perfect. He's got used to it being a bit, a bit ... " "Manky?" Nobby suggested. Tucked behind his ear, in the place usually reserved for his cigarette, was another wilting lilac flower. "Exactly," said Colon. "Like, it's never going to be perfect, so you just do the best you can, right? But when there's a kid on the way, well, suddenly a man sees it different. He thinks: my kid's going to have to grow up in this mess. Time to clean it up. Time to make it a Better World. He gets a bit ... keen. Full of ginger. — Terry Pratchett

Then I place the blade next to the skine on my palm.
A tingle arced across my scalp. The flood tipped up at me and my body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next. What happened next was thet a perfect, straight line of blood bloomed from under the blade.The line grow into a long, Fat bubbel, A lush crimson bubbel that got bigger and bigger. I watch from above, waiting to see how big it would get before it burst. when it did, I felt awesome. Satisfied, finally. Then exhausted. — Patricia McCormick

You grow up with a heightened sense of the Civil Rights Movement, but I think it wasn't until I became of age that I really had a great appreciation for the struggle that took place. — Terri Sewell

I understand that Detroit was a pretty rough place to grow up in the '70s and '80s. — Buzz Aldrin

Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else--word one--I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth. — Jerry Holkins

And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?" he says, reading my Noise. "What other kind of man is suitable for war?"
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
"Wrong," says the Mayor. "It's war that makes us men in the first place. Until there's war, we are only children."
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
"Ready to grow up, Todd?" the Mayor asks. — Patrick Ness

I grew up in such a melting pot. There's more ethnicities in Queens than there is in any place on the planet. So you grow up knowing things about other cultures. — Action Bronson

After I took Lisa's braces off, we climbed out of my bedroom window onto the roof of the porch below, smoked cigarettes in our nightgowns, and talked about boys. If I had tried that summer to imagine what my future would look like, it would have been as much a mystery to me then as my own reflection in those cutoff shorts. This is what I understand now that I could not have seen then: When you grow up in a home where nobody goes to work, where nobody is married, in a place where there are few jobs and few opportunities, you do not stay up late whispering about weddings and college and careers. You live in that moment, or maybe in the next; you do not make decisions that will impact a future that you do not let yourself imagine; you do not make a plan beyond your next pack of cigarettes. — Heather Ross

And now it's your turn.
You're the only one left, and I know you're here, somewhere. Maybe you're in the back of one of the closets, whimpering a prayer that I won't find you. Maybe you've holed up in some secret hiding place you've known about since childhood and are damning me to hell, hoping I'll grow tired of this game we're playing and just leave you alone.
This IS a big house. But I am very thorough.
You've been very patient as I've gone around blocking the doors and wedging the windows shut. I didn't hear a peep out of you, even though you must have known that each scrape of wood, each rattle of metal meant another escape route closed off. Maybe you've accepted that there is NO escape. — Stefan R. Dziemianowicz

I left home at 15 because Hollywood isn't the best place to grow up. — Samuel Goldwyn

I grew up in the south of Italy, next to the sea, which was a great place to grow up. The type of life we lived there was very relaxing. Just very fun, open-minded people. It was all very sociable and low-key. — Nicki Minaj

I was privileged to grow up in Mexico at a time when you could play in the streets. We lived not too far from the ocean, and we would be outside all the time with the neighbours' kids, running free. What better place could there be for a child? — Salma Hayek

She preferred silence. So I do not know her and yet I know her. She was ... (He touches the coffin) ... not a person but a whole kind of person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to America the villages of Russia and Lithuania - and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted. — Tony Kushner

Even if I could be forgiven, how long could I keep up the insincere apologies I made in pain, once I was back in my comfortable old high place. IV-98. For never can true reconcilement grow / Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep: — Joseph Lanzara