“Just because you re an adult doesn t mean you re grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation. Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation? Because if you can prove you re a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don t have to be accountable for anything.”
“We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.”
“I ve screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.”
“She had been a teenager once, and she knew that, despite the apparent contradictions, a person s teenage years lasted well into their fifties.”
“Thats the trick of growing up. Nothing stays the same. Hook sounded oddly sympathetic. You see the faults in everything. Including yourself.”
“It s alright, just wait and see, your string of lights is still bright to me. Who you are is not where you ve been. You re still an innocent. It s okay life is a tough crowd, 32 is still growing up now.”
“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”
“When you re born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you re lucky as you travel forward through time, you ll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it s alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
“Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.”
“You said you want to became Hokage. I have become the Kazekage. If you are willing to bear the name Kage, you have to do what you must do.”
“I think you’re freaked about what happened at Cambridge. I think it scared you. “I’ve been through worse, Bex,” I said, joining her on the lower stairs. “Way worse.” “Oh, not the attack.” Bex raised her finger in contradiction. “What happened before the attack. I think you saw the future. Which is kind of freaky when - two months ago - you didn’t think you were going to have one.”
“I used to think that when I grew up there wouldn t be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure. What I m finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there s nobody watching.”
“I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were...miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around.”
“I, on the other hand, still might not be considered a proper adult. I had been very grown-up in primary school. But as I continued through secondary school, I in fact became less grown-up. And then as the years passed, I turned into quite a childlike person. I suppose I just wasn t able to ally myself with time.”
“This is growing up, having to stomp out love, this is how people turn terrible.”
“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”
“They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. I don t know what happened to me, he said, shaking his head. I honestly don t. Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. You grew up, Alex, he said, just like the rest of us.”