Jodi Picoult Quotes

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

Kids don't shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.

I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

I always had the street mentality, but when you're older, you get more mature.

All people, even one's own children, come with baggage. When they're little, you have to help them carry it. But when they grow up, you have to do that difficult thing of setting their baggage down and taking up your own again.

Time makes you bolder, children get older. I'm getting older, too.

It is only grown-ups who want children to be children; children themselves always want to be real people.

Getting old is horrible, but it is interesting . . . one of the things I've realized is that growing old is compulsory, but growing up is optional.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.

Katie is like my calendar, watching her grow and change. She is growing up so fast, learning to have opinions of her own, learning that I don’t have the answers to everything. And the moment a child begins to understand that, you know you’re in trouble.

"What is the greatest mistake a parent can make?" she asked. "To believe that your children will be just like you."

You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.

Growing old is compulsory - growing up is optional.

The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?"

There's a marketing scheme that tells you that pregnancy and child rearing will make you into a moron, that your kids are only happy when you're buying them stuff. It's hard being a parent, but I laugh a lot and smile a lot and really enjoy it. The ratio of laughter to sadness is higher. There's part of me that wants to broadcast that. Parenting only affirmed what I already cared about, and that's good.

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.

I think that growing up is something that you should do gradually.

No matter your position or place in life, it is imperative to create opportunities for children so that we can grow up to blow you away.

When you get busy, the priorities change. In your twenties, you hang out with who you were in school with. Then you grow up and you hang out with the people you're playing ball with, things you like doing with. When you get married, it changes a bit and you lose some friends, or you gain other friends. You gain couple-y friends. It changes again when you have children, and then when your children are the focus of your life.

The children who are appreciated for what they are, even if they are homely, or clumsy, or slow, will grow up with confidence in themselves and happy. They will have a spirit that will make the best of all the capacities that they do have and of all the opportunities that come their way.

When people talk about wanting to have children someday, what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.

As you get older, you change certain things.

A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.