Quotes About Growth

Was this the epiphany of adult life, that it actually wasn't exciting and vast in possibilities, but was in fact as enclosed and proscribed as childhood?

But later on, having met in childhood can turn out to have been the worst thing, because you and your friends might have nothing to say to each other anymore, except, 'Wasn't it funny that time in tenth grade

Anyone who ever gave a speech," said Faith, "was once someone who didn't. ...

The men she met all seemed to say they were "several years out of Wesleyan." Their beds were never made, or else made poorly, when she climbed into them. No one yet had the time or inclination to take care of themselves, and it was unclear when that would ever begin.

I was born like this. I came out of the womb saying, 'I'm worried that something's wrong with me. There's this weird growth between my legs!

This was an era in which sofa beds were frequently opened and unfolded; at this age people were still floating, not entirely landed, still needing places to stay the night sometimes. They were doing what they could, crashing in other places, living extemporaneously. Soon enough, the pace would pick up, the solid matter of life would kick in. Soon enough, sofa beds would stay folded.

We can't be afraid of change, or else we'll miss out on everything.

In a new environment, it was possible to transform.

The more you were not with a person, the more your lives diverged.

People wanted one another to do something. They wanted someone to say the thing that they could then take into themselves and transform into something else.

I hadn't known that if you hold on, if you force yourself as hard as you can to find some kind of patience in the middle of all your impatience, things can change. It's big, and it's always incredibly messy. But there's no way around the mess.

Sometimes you had to let go of your convictions, or at least loosen them far more than you ever though you would.

You're all equipped for the world, for adulthood, in a way that most people aren't," she continues. "So many people don't even know what hits them when they grow up. They feel clobbered over the head the minute the first thing goes wrong, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid pain at all costs. But you all know that avoiding pain is impossible. And I think having that knowledge, plus the experiences you've lived through, make you definitely not fragile. They make you brave.

When I learned to read, it changed everything.

When you have a child, it's like right away there's this grandiose fantasy about who he'll become. And then time goes on and a funnel appears. And the child get pushed through that funnel, and shaped by it, and narrowed a little bit.

Married life proved not very different from premarried life, except now there was the desire for solidity instead of expansion.

Then it wouldn't be long before they all found themselves shocked and sad to be fully grown into their thicker, finalized adult selves, with almost no chance for reinvention.

How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself

Throw yourself into new experiences... Why not try to use your 'outside voice'? You know, I sometimes think that the most effective people in the world are introverts who taught themselves how to be extroverts.

you sometimes feel totally unready for them, or even that they're

all the girls had secretly sprung up in height, even as the teachers and mothers had gotten squashed and lost height and calcium, their bones ground down with an invisible pestle.

I sometimes think that the most effective people in the world are introverts who taught themselves how to be extroverts.

What you knew, felt and wanted now, and the way you could love now, had a long valley of seriousness running through it that had always perhaps been there, though to a lesser extent.

Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood.