Chris Crutcher Quotes

When I was younger, I'd wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child's wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn't promise, not and mean it.

By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

You spend your childhood wanting to get out from your house and wanting to get away and out into the real world, and then as adults, we start to learn that things are not what we thought they were.

Back when I was an idealistic 18-year-old on my way to Chicago, I might have believed that being on the side of virtue would guarantee a good outcome. These many years later, I know better.

Growing up is mostly the process of having to acknowledge the differences between your world and the whole world.

Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.

When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles.

I want to be simple. I think that we try - and we think when we grow up - that we have the truth, because we experience and stuff. But that bullsh*t actually.

I had a real strong fantasy life as a kid. But then you grow up and think about real jobs.

I don't think any of us grew up into the world we were hoping for or expecting.

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

When you're young, you worry about what other people think. The older you get, the less that matters.

Seeing my parents makes me realise that life is not a fairy tale.

I remember when I was 33 or 34, it was devastating because I realized I wasn't a kid anymore. The great thing about 40 was that I really felt like I had life experience and knew what I was doing now.

I think part of being an adult is leaving the fairytale behind.

I don't think I really realized what being an adult and being a real grownup was until I was at least twenty-eight.

There's that bubble of childhood that makes you innocently do anything. Then, when you get older, that pops, and you're aware of limitations and judgment and social pressures and things like that.

I'm no longer in my 20s, and I think, by default, the rose-colored glasses are off.

I'll never forget when I was 12 years old. I couldn't wait until the day I was 16 and could drive a car. I thought that'd be the end of life's problems. I mean, you can drive! What is there left? And then I turned 16 and realized there were still problems.

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

There's certain classes you have to take, certain things you have to do, certain money you must have. Then, if you listen to the counselors and social workers and everybody else talking at you, you would think that once you got out of high school and college, life would be beautiful. But it's not.

The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.

In my youth I, too, entertained some illusions; but I soon recovered from them.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's.