Growing up is a trap. When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat.

growth growing up

About Tom Robbins

Portrait of Tom Robbins

Thomas Eugene Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025) was an American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies" (also known as "comedy dramas"). His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into the 1993 film version by Gus Van Sant. His last work, published in 2014,...

More quotations from Tom Robbins

What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.

power imagination change limitation nerve

Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.

solitude self-love romance intensity

Despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.

despair sadness sex misery unhappiness masturbation

We’re making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.

delusion life reality world universe

It doesn’t matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you’re not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren’t connected, aren’t working together harmoniously, well, you’re just hopping through life on one leg.

education intelligence sensitivity brain hear harmony

More quotations tagged with “growing up”

What they don't tell you is that you're more confused at twenty than you were at seventeen.

—Penelope Douglas in Falling Away

growing up confusion

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

—Pablo Picasso

aging art growing up

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.

maturity children growing up home

You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

—John J. Plomp

questions children growing up rationality answers

Sometimes it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.

—Jacqueline Woodson in Between Madison and Palmetto

time age growing up kids

History

3 Mar 2014 Added