Growing Pains Quotes

“Alone, alone. I am alone – I ache … Yet for the first time, despite all the anguish and the reality problems, I’m here. I feel tranquil, whole, ADULT.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“To return to the city of one's birth always felt like retreat.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Just as the sheet nearest to hand takes from a master
The true hasty stroke, just so
The mirror often takes into itself
The sole, the divine laugh of a girl,

As she experiences the morning, alone -
Or in the radiance of attendant candlelight.
And later, when this visage actually breathes,
Gives back only a reflection.

What eyes have not upon occasion gazed
Into the long-smoking embers that fade in the fire:
Life-glimpses, lost forever?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Long ago, I would’ve laughed at the idea of not killing someone as my first option, but here I am.

It’s strange, the ease of falling so far from who I once was, but does it not take falling to learn how to stand?”
― H.S. Crow

“She had resisted returning there [to Los Angeles, the city of her birth] because to return to one's home town felt like surrender.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“As we move through the seasons we are in, we move knowing that another is always to follow and the process repeats as we move through the years.”
― Niedria Kenny, Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player

“Oh scattered band, once my playmates, you few
Who were amidst the gardens here and there in the city,
How hesitantly we located one another, took fancies and
Like the tapestry lamb whose mute words are on a scroll,

Spoke through silence. Our little joys were
Never communicated, - Whose indeed were they?
And among all the passers-by, those hurriers, how it all
Evanesced quite away, weighed down by the torment of the endless year.

Past us were drawn the carriages, wholly indifferent,
Round us the houses stood strong but not real, - and none
Of these were aware of us. What was truly real in it all?

Nothing. Only the balls we tossed, their magnificent arcs,
But certainly not the children. ... Though sometimes one would step
- Alas, one who would soon be lost, - beneath a falling ball.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Does time really exist, time the destroyer?
When will it break down the castle into mere fragments?
When will this heart which has always been in the service of the gods
Be governed by the Creator, the Demiurge?

Are we really so desperately fragile
As Fate would wish to make us?
Is childhood, which is so deep, so full of promise,
Later stilled at its root?

Oh, the spectre of perishability,
How it infiltrates and passes through the innocently receptive,
As if it were smoke!

And we, we who are drifting,
We still rank as a divine rite
Amongst those lasting Powers.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“This part of my life is called The Remix. When you notice that you are no longer on the track, just sing along and be happy for me.”
― Niedria Dionne Kenny

“He’s taller than his shadow now; at odd minutes he scrapes the fading sky with the round, upturned bowl of skull that holds his matter in. No way to catch those minutes, no way to stable the seconds. He is simply growing, but not simply. There’s nothing simple about the way he’s aching and expanding.”
― Laurie Perez, Virga in Death Valley

“I pay tribute to that little girl who is constantly told by society that she is not beautiful. For the older woman who hides behind her mask and colors her gray hair. And to the senior woman who feels that her wrinkles are a negative reminder of growing older.

Know that you are all beautiful, just the way you are. Let the radiance you were born with shine through.”
― Alyscia Cunningham

“They take over your life and then, one day, they walk off with it.”
― Tim Dowling

“The journey of figuring out how to get the cookies from the cookie jar is more adventurous and exciting than your parents picking you up giving it to you.

Meaning- Let me fall, let me fail and let me learn mom.”
― Jayden Codner

“She's the type of girl Billy Joel would write songs about.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“You say you like to be by yourself,
I am like that too.
Although I don't think company would be so bad,
If time were shared with you.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“He was the type of happy you always dreamt you could be.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“People aren't like books. You can't set them on a shelf and expect them to stay there.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“I think people should know that moving on doesn't always mean letting go.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“There's a difference between being kind and letting people walk all over you.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“My lover sees in shades of green,
The good, the bad, the in between.
He often speaks with his hands,
Holding mine and making plans.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“I treat positivity like ammunition; I constantly try to kill a bad thought with a good one.”
― Bailey Nadeen

“Growing old is a true blessing, but it often comes with a hefty price tag.”
― Carlos Wallace, Life is not Complicated, You Are

“You only have one life but you can have as many transformations as you'd like.”
― Niedria Kenny, Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player

“The weight of youth is light, yes, but life generally grows heavier into adulthood. This, embedded as deep as the most human social construct, reaches even territories of natural law: we call it 'responsibility' - or the harmony kept afloat by able grown-ups carrying their own weight.”
― Criss Jami

“Admittedly, the modern teenager was a bit of a mystery to Jones. But he did know one thing: they were wired together like the Borg, constantly calling, e-mailing, texting, social-networking.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“There’s no much I didn’t know until I was 30 years old. It’s a bitter sweet truth because I wasn’t exposed to much and didn’t experience a lot. I was sheltered and protected. However, learning what can happen and what people can do to you, that late in life has had its costs.”
― Niedria Kenny

“At dawn, I sail far from every shore to drain my cup in the sea, barring a bead I keep, tucked close like wings. I acquaint myself this way with the missing parts of who I am, as testaments, ungentle offerings—the rattles of a skeleton child reckoning with the rules of the game.”
― Saif Sidari, Visiting Hours

“A certain door of life was shut behind her and could not be re-opened.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

“Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

“Her boy—this child she raised on her own,
in whom she placed her purest faith, to whom she read on countless evenings books he loved, which she found dull, for whom she baked special birthday cakes in the shapes of superheroes, and with whom she whooped and hollered around the backyard while pointing cowboy sticks against darkening skies—was no longer her ally. Bang, bang.”
― Stephanie Dupal, The Kindness of Terrible People and Other Stories