I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!
it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.
Sara: "You are so brave," I tell her, and then I smile. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you." To my surprise, Kate shakes her head hard. Her voice is a feather, a thread. "No Mommy," she says. "You'd be sick.
Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up
The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face.
No one ever asks a kid for her opinion, but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst.
...as it turned out, growing up was just as she'd feared. One day when your alarm clock rang, you got up and realized you had someone else's thoughts in your head... or may be just your old ones, minus the hope.
Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up.
All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face. For years, parents tell you that you can be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she'd been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big fat wall ofreality. As it turned out, she couldn't have anything she wanted. You didn't get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn't control your own destiny, you were too busy trying to fit in.
Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.
Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.
I wonder if, as you get older, you stop missing people so fiercely. Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you've got, instead of what you don't.