Andre Maurois Quotes

Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone--childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be.

Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Unlike most other children, - especially unlike those of today - who are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew older.

I think when you are 17 you are very innocent.

For many of us, the curtain had just come down on childhood.

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

Welcome to adulthood." Cob said. "Every child finds a day when the realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like everyone else. After that day, you are an adult. Like it or not.

Sometimes I feel like the Tom Hanks character in Big. But my life is not a movie. I never have to go back to Coney Island to find the fortune-teller machine so I have to grow up again.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood.

Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.

I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things, but you're old enough, too.

Soon the child learns that there are strangers, and ceases to be a child.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?

You get 12 years of childhood, give or take.

I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.

I grew up overnight on that day, Dec. 27, 2007.

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

I turned 30, and everyone told me I would feel different, and I didn't.

It was quite a blow to have my perfect image of my father shattered, but that's something we all face before we come to full adulthood.

As a child, I thought, 'Once I am a grown-up, there will be no more fear, no more worries,' and it turns out that's not true.

Honestly, I felt pressure more when I was a lot younger.