Russell Banks Quotes

When I was teeny tiny, I definitely had a voice that didn't quite match the way I looked at five.

For a long time I felt like I was fighting my age, like I was constantly trying to prove to people that I was a savvy peer, and I felt them viewing me as a kid. I was a cocky kid, and I felt like I was an adult at, like, 9, you know? I think that's because my parents always treated me as an adult.

You act at being a man, and before you know it, you are one.

It's fun when your kids reach a point where you can actually start talking about things.

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

Everyone underestimates the maturity of kids.

The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.

All these years I've been feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Once you realize you can make people laugh, it's a superpower. When you're really young, you don't know how to use that power, so I would just say the meanest things I could to get a laugh. I was so awful. I would make fun of kids who didn't deserve to get made fun of. I was just mean, when I was really young. You don't realize that you don't have to be mean to be funny. But, it was something that I was just able to grow into.

You can't marry boys and expect them to be men - and you can't massage them into being men.

I think people who struggle to define themselves might never be satisfied because there is no definition. Living with responsibility is important, but I don't really think you have to grow up.

When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

To me, it's important to prove that this isn't just teenage kids' s**t and you should feel embarrassed when you're over forty and still doing it.

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.

A kid is a guy I never wrote down to. He's interested in what I say if I make it interesting.

Has it ever occurred to you that parents are nothing but overgrown kids until their children drag them into adulthood? Usually kicking and screaming?

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.

I'm trying not to be a kid all the time, but it's hard.

Every time you see kid and hear kid, you think, man, I have to not sound like a kid.

One day you will be the one called Master (Naruto). You'll be the one to treat others to ramen. We can't stay kids forever." - Shikamaru Nara (Naruto)

When you become an adult you just make that transition and you're right... it's fun and exciting to be an adult and exciting to have independence, but once you're out from under the cover of your family's protection and love, you sort of have to take a step back and come to terms with the fact that you won't really ever have that again in the same way. You'll never be a kid again.

As the children get older and know what they want ... We all grew up at one point.