The dream of empire died when Shanghai surrendered without a fight. Even at the age of 11 or 12, I knew that no amount of patriotic newsreels would put the Union Jack jigsaw together again. From then on, I was slightly suspicious of all British adult...
I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books.
At the age of 16 I was already dreaming of having a baby because I felt myself to be an adult, but my mum forbid it. Right now, I feel like a teenager and I want to have fun for one or two more years before starting a family.
But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.
He felt teenage rejection overcoming him like a childhood virus that lies dormant, then attacks the unsuspecting adult. It would never be something he would get used to.
Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say “tell the truth,” and when you do, they don’t believe you. What’s the point?
That was the problem, wasn't it? You left home. But you never did become an adult. Not really. You just fucked up in different and more complicated ways.
Progress should never be impeded by a need to coddle adults who respond to the world as children.
Their faith in him is at once touching and alarming -- their trust that they are safe simply because he's with them, as if an adult presence warded of all possible threat, emanated an unbreachable forcefield.
On the whole she found erring children easier to deal with than their frantic parents, confirming her conclusion that marriage did strange things to the adult mind.
[C]hildren were a much more difficult audience than adults because no on had yet had a chance to teach them that it was better to be polite than honest.
I accepted what the Sisters taught in religion class: that God is loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving. That message didn't jibe with adults smacking kids.
Stories arrest us. Parents use stories to capture the attention of active children. Preachers use stories to capture the attention of sleepy adults.
Children are the closest we have to wisdom, and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.
I read somewhere that when you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.
There is nothing more pathetically sad than a parent who teaches a child not to hit by spanking them. Well, that, and adults who think hitting someone will solve a problem.
Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become and adult. I hope it's worth it.
Those who know say that the most painful punishment that can be inflicted upon an adult male, short of injuring him, is a good, old fashioned shaking.
She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship.
I felt for the first time, maybe ever, how much harder it was to be the adults. And I wasn't sure I could do that when it was my turn.
There is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children.
