Adult Identity Quotes

When I was very young, it was all, 'Here's little Johnny,' and I got stuck with it, but I prefer John. There comes a time in a man's life when he shouldn't have a name ending in 'y'.

I don't like to photograph children as children. I like to see them as adults, as who they really are. I'm always looking for the side of who they might become.

I'm terrified of growing up. Once you become an adult, how to you step back from that? It's something that wakes me up at night.

I was terrified of growing up to become the anti-me, maturing into a woman whom I would not recognise and who wouldn't recognise her younger self.

In the sibling society, both the adult and the elder get lost, and no one knows where they are.

When you're young, you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it, in a sense, too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden, one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice.

Many of the things that I have written on have focused, at least a big part of the story, on adolescents. I think that in that period of life, so much happens, and it's the period of life where you're forming into an adult. In certain ways, you're already an adult and in certain ways you're still a kid.

I didn't want to be a former child actor for the rest of my life, although in some ways I suppose I am. I am going to be that.

It was a scary decision to let cameras into my life, but if I was going to do it, I just wanted to be really honest and kind of introduce myself as an adult. I think the world met me as a young girl, and they still associate me with who I was when I was 13, they still don't understand how over the last eight years what has happened and who I've become.

I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.

I love the pictures of Old Hollywood, seeing the directors dressed in suits and ties. Even the grips would be wearing ties. But the biggest thing is when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be an adult, and I think what happens with most guys is that no one wants to be an adult anymore. So they're dressing like kids.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

I like to think of myself less like 'an adult' and more like a 'former fetus.'

In case I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to make something clear - I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.

I refuse to grow up. I won't become the adult guy.

I am still my teenage self. If you think that we all step through a door marked Adult, or that we sign a Grown-Up Document, you’re quite wrong. We remain as we always were, and that, alas, is one of life’s many nasty tricks.

I'm not just the young girl everybody thinks I am. I'm actually a woman.

Writing from a teen's perspective is easy as pie. At least I've actually been a teen. I've never been a woman, or an ethnic minority, or a weary old man. If anything, writing from the perspective of a child is probably easier for me. When I was a kid everyone thought I was so clever and precocious. Now that I'm adult, everyone thinks that I'm kinda odd and childish.

I've had a prolonged adolescence, like a lot of my generation.

There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years.

I do like playing the darker side of life but as much as the lighter side as well. They all resonate out of the same place, which is that everyone has a story to tell. Depending on their upbringing and their history, it determines who they are as an adult. My job is to take the role from there.

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

Part of me is still waiting to grow up, to be an adult, and the other part knows there is no such thing.

It used to be that a son could look at the father, and pretty much know what life was gonna be like as an adult. There was confidence in that, and comfort in that, and frustration also.