You are young," said my father. "You won't get any younger even if you clean your teeth twice a day."" You'll get older," said my mother, "that's what happens."" Then what happens?"" You won't be able to find the treasure."" Will I be too old to look for it?"" No, but you'll be looking in the wrong place.

— Jeanette Winterson

You boys are really turning into a bunch of Peter Pans," he said. "Willem, what are you? Thirty-six? I'm not sure what's going on with you lot. You’re making money. You've achieved something. Don't you think you guys should stop clinging to one another and get serious about adulthood?" But how was one to be an adult? Was couple hood truly the only appropriate option?

— Hanya Yanagihara

You can’t just be. You have to become.

— Dominic Riccitello

You go through so many changes as a child, then you grow up and discover that none of that stuff mattered, except for the impression it made on your mind.

— Joan Walton Collaso

You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again.

— Michael Marshall Smith

Young people must appreciate the beauty of old age. The old people were once young.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

You’re probably wondering what the heck I mean by “The Pillars of Your Life”, right? Well this is simple. It’s the things that make your life what it is. The things or people that make you, you. There’s work, family, your hobby, your art, and your traditions. Except, some of us have wonky pillars. Some of us give one pillar too much to hold, and the others not enough. One’s too tall, whilst the others are too small. Therefore, we become unstable, and sometimes, everything comes crashing down.

— S.R. Crawford

You see, I don't think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12, and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12….

— C.S. Lewis

You," she said. She grabbed my wrist and pressed two fingers onto me as if taking my pulse and I stopped breathing. "I know you. I remember you from my youth. You contain multitudes. There is a crush of experience coursing by you. And you want to take every experience on the pulse.

— Stephanie Danler

You will never win anyone through pity. You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.

— Sylvia Plath