Neal Shusterman Quotes

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

It's the idea of baggage. When you hear about people in their 40s boast about not having baggage. I think having no baggage is your baggage. That means that you haven't thrown yourself into the mess of life.

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

You don't become a fully-formed human as a female, or even a male, until you're at least 30.

I didn't get married until I was forty because I wanted to be stable when I got married. I think I just avoided my first marriage and went right to the second. It's sort of how I see it. When you're young, just trying to make it, and trying to find your way in the world, and figure things out... being married is not easy.

I've done quite a lot of growing up in public, which has been tricky at times.

In order to endure death and horror one tends to kill ones own humanity, which is a much greater danger than not being able to bear it.

No matter how healthy a man's morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pock-marked soul.

We get older and more sophisticated and a bit cleverer, but certainly boys - and men - are as childish and basic as we ever were.

A lot of people think teenagers haven't gone through anything in their lives - they're not even 20 years old yet. But a twenty-something can go through the same type of experience or heartbreak that a 50-year-old can go through, so why does age matter?

The things that have happened for me, to me, have helped me grow up. Especially the passing of my father. That was something that took me to another level of growing and maturing. That's whan I started to be more of a man.

I think when you're in your 20s, going from adolescence to about 24, I think your life is a series of emotional storms that you have to weather. Life is more emotional at that time, and you're less equipped to deal with what life throws at you. I always think that if you can get past 24, than life really starts at that point.

Life's not so rocky now. It was very volatile when you're young: you've got no experience. Your sense of disappointment is far greater; your sense of success is overwhelming. And then you've got the emotional conflict within any group that you're not mature enough to deal with until you get older. It levels out.

I think that when you emigrate, when everything you took for granted disappears, it's a kind of loss of innocence. When you're a kid, the world as you know it is just there. Suddenly, you emigrate and that's no longer the case. It's a break in reality that parachutes you into adulthood.

The shadow is not a problem to be solved or an enemy to be conquered, but a fertile field to be cultivated. When we dig our hands into its rich soil we will discover the potent seeds of the people we most desire to be.

Though we marry as adults, we don't marry adults. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative.

It is better to have some unhappiness while one is still young, for if a person does not experience some bitterness, his disposition will not settle down.

I feel that adolescence has served its purpose when a person arrives at adulthood with a strong sense of self-esteem, the ability to relate intimately, to communicate congruently, to take responsibility, and to take risks. The end of adolescence is the beginning of adulthood. What hasn't been finished then will have to be finished later.

Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.

The mature person meets the demands of life, while the immature person demands that life meet her demands.

It's very common to think that we're always evolving, that we've changed so much from our younger selves, that within decades we've transformed into these different people. We like to think that. I feel in some ways that I am still so much my younger self. There are ways that I'm different: I feel like I'm wiser and kinder. But I think a lot of the impulses are still the same. I learned that.

I was handed a tough life lesson at a very early age.

I had proof that I had five senses, that I knew how to get myself to function! And then I lost my childhood.

We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.

The most sophisticated people I've ever known had just one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.