Quotes on Adults

Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.

Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.

[I]f we can bring our children understanding, comfort, and hopefulness when they need this kind of support, then they are more likely to grow into adults who can find these resources within themselves later on. (from the introduction)

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.

Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.

This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen?

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.

After all, when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasn’t much we could do to help put it right. But now we’re adults, now we can. That’s the thing, you see? Look at us, Akira. After all this time, we can finally put things right. Remember, old chap, how we used to play those games? Over and over? How we used to pretend we were detectives searching for my father? Now we’re grown, we can at last put things right.

Given love and opportunity, every child and adult can recover. All who know this and have the capacity to help others should assist as they can.

In our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.

...nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet.

Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

I was wearing my best Gap turtleneck and my dates were two adult lesbians, so yea, I was pretty cool.

I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

I try to sign for as many kids as possible. Kids come first, and I'll always sign for a kid before an adult. It's funny, because I was never big into autographs as a kid. The only player who I ever wanted an autograph from was Dave Winfield.