45 Growing Up Quotes

Growing up is a universal experience, rich with a blend of excitement, challenges, and poignant moments. It’s a journey that shapes who we are, influencing our values, dreams, and how we see the world. As we navigate the ups and downs of life, sometimes a little wisdom from others can shed light on our path. In this collection, we’ve gathered 45 insightful quotes on growing up, each capturing a unique aspect of this complex voyage. Whether you’re looking for a moment of reflection, inspiration, or simply a nugget of wisdom to carry with you, these quotes provide thoughtful perspectives on the experience of maturing and evolving. Dive in and explore how these words resonate with your own understanding of growing up.

1. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” - C.S. Lewis

2. “It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.” - Sarah Dessen

3. “We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.” - Hunter S. Thompson

4. “We had so many dreams as children. Where do they go when we grow? Are they swallowed up by the mundane things of everyday life? Or do we lose them, leave them behind us in the dust, for new children to find and take up?” - Helen Hollick

5. “Adulthood is accretive by nature, a thing which arrives in ragged stages and uneven overlaps.” - Stephen King

6. “One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.” - Patricia Briggs

7. “The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.” - Richard Peck

8. “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.” - Cassandra Clare

9. “I don’t want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid.” - David Almond

10. “We were still at the age when girls are years older than guy, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to.” - Tana French

11. “The Girl was gone, buried in the past. She never wanted to hear that name again. She was a woman for better for worse. Whatever the future might bring she could face it as a woman, Ned Ridley's woman.” - Catherine Cookson

12. “Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?” - Betty Smith

13. “Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

14. “If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.” - Junot Diaz

15. “I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.” - Bill Watterson

16. “This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne--the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say.” - Maryrose Wood

17. “Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.” - Deb Caletti

18. “They said growing up was watching your breasts grow, your waist widen and hairs sprout on your erogenous ones. You became aware of the warmness that spread in circles in your stomach when that fine boy smiled at you. But that was not growing to me. Growing up was watching Papa drift away from us, and Mama grow drastically older from frying Akara balls just to cater for our home.” - Ukamaka Olisakwe

19. “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.” - Maya Angelou

20. “After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.” - V.C. Andrews

21. “Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.” - Andrea Lavinthal

22. “When I was about nine, my siblings and I fell out of our moving van at an intersection. My dad didn’t notice for about five blocks. It was back before seat belts. It was also back before parents used any sort of common sense whatsoever. It was a time when you didn’t raise your children. You just fed them and they got bigger.” - Dina Kucera

23. “I found myself suddenly jealous of the time when things were simple, when days centered on creek walks and tetherball, and your biggest worry was whether you'd have riding or sailing. There were no boys, there were no secrets or rumors, and there were no regrets. Not even fear of regret. There was just a best friend and endless hours to fill with Pixy Stix and laughing so hard you couldn't breathe.” - Kathryn Williams

24. “At their core, Tiger Eyes, Forever..., and Sally J. Freeman are all books about teenage issues, but to an adult reader, the parents' story lines seem to almost overshadow their daughters. I'm bringing an entirely new set of experiences to these novels now, and my reward is a fresh set of story lines that i missed the first time around. I'm sure that in twenty or thirty years I'll read these books again and completely identify with all the grandparent characteristics. That's the wonderful thing about Judy Blume - you can revisit her stories at any stage in life and find a character who strikes a deep chord of recognition. I've been there, I'm in the middle of this, someday that'll be me. The same characters, yet somehow completely different. (Beth Kendrick)” - Jennifer O'Connell

25. “You can get what you want or you can just get old.” - Billy Joel

26. “Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that the modern world is sorely lacking in imagination. And grown-ups are the biggest culprits of all.” - Sarvenaz Tash

27. “My child, I know you're not a childBut I still see you running wildBetween those flowering trees.Your sparkling dreams, your silver laughYour wishes to the stars above Are just my memories.And in your eyes the oceanAnd in your eyes the seaThe waters frozen overWith your longing to be free.Yesterday you'd awokenTo a world incredibly old.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.You had to kill this child, I know.To break the arrows and the bowTo shed your skin and change.The trees are flowering no moreThere's blood upon the tiles floorThis place is dark and strange.I see you standing in the stormHolding the curse of youthEach of you with your storyEach of you with your truth.Some words will never be spokenSome stories will never be told.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.I didn't say the world was good.I hoped by now you understoodWhy I could never lie.I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for springJust spread your wings and fly.Though in the hidden gardenDown by the green green laneThe plant of love grows next toThe tree of hate and pain.So take my tears as a token.They'll keep you warm in the cold.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.You've lived too long among usTo leave without a traceYou've lived too short to understandA thing about this place.Some of you just sit there smokingAnd some are already sold. This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.” - Antonia Michaelis

28. “Era um dos efeitos colaterais da juventude: sair da inocência e ingenuidade da infância e cair na alienação umbigocêntrica daquela fase em que acreditamos que já somos adultos. Mas é somente isso, achismo e autoengano. Ainda há um longo caminho pela frente e muito a aprender. Muito mesmo.” - Camilo Gomes Jr

29. “It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.” - Kimberly Novosel

30. “the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.” - Edgar Lee Masters

31. “Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

32. “She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now--the glory and the dream?” - L.M. Montgomery

33. “I didn't begin life hating my grandmother. Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.” - Augusten Burroughs

34. “What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore.And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.” - Jake Vander Ark

35. “There’s a different flavor to children’s literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.” - Mizuki Nomura

36. “That time when past begins to look longer than the future” - Whipplesnaith

37. “[...]And his head is on fire with new things[...]he called himself the little blue hermit, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever.” - Terry Pratchett

38. “Hand, nobody told me about the weight. Why didn't our parents tell us about the weight?—What weight?—The fucking weight, Hand. How does the woman Ingres live? The one from Marrakesh? If we're vessels, and we are, then we, you and I, are overfull, and that means she's at the bottom of a deep cold lake. How can she stand the hissing of all that water?—We are not vessels; we are missiles.—We're static and we're empty. We are overfull and leaden.—We are airtight and we are missiles and all-powerful.” - Dave Eggers

39. “Magda looks at me as if I've gone mad. Or I've grown up. It's kind of the same thing.” - Victoria Schwab

40. “Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…” - Roddy Doyle

41. “The idea of not being a kid anymore terrifies me. I am an adult and I have been hurled out of the world of boys and girls into the fray of men and women, and expected to function as a grown-up when I never functioned very well as a kid.” - Kelley York

42. “At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me like a gift.” - Geraldine Brooks

43. “I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem.Watch me burn.Love always, Charlotte” - Charlotte Eriksson

44. “We can't go back, Alexa", he said. " We can't go back once we've started growing up, and the world can't be made simple again.” - Patrick Carman

45. “As exciting, difficult, and memorable as our past can be, there comes a time when we have to get on with living.” - Patrick Carman