Calan

“A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.”
― Mary Renault, The King Must Die

“The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, "had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man.”
― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

“There was that word again.Mature. Was this what maturity was? Giving up on the things we wanted because we knew we’d never get them?”
― Diana Peterfreund

“Nothing special has happened today; no one can say she was more provoked than usual. It is only that every day one grows a little, every day something is different, so that in the heaping up of days suddenly a thing that was impossible has become possible. This is how a girl becomes a grown woman. Step by step until it is done.”
― Naomi Alderman, The Power