We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

Prime time for men is, say, 35 to 45. Then they level off and fall off.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.

We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

I’m not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way. Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I’m seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

I’ve come to admire our military kids more than you all will know, because you guys are heroes. And the only way your parents are able to serve is because you guys hold it down, and you do it with maturity beyond your years.

I vote and I do jury duty.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

As you get older, you have more responsibilities; you have more commitments, more events, kids, you’re married now. You still have all the things that you’ve had, plus you just keep adding.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don’t have to riot.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Adults are obsolete children.

A grown man should always carry cash, right? I don’t know who told me, but someone told me that a long time ago, and the biggest turnoff is when a guy doesn’t have cash on him.

How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I’ve got. Somebody’s got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain’t got this, somebody ain’t got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.

Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing – hopefully.

Some guys look better as they get older.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

Being the only man in the household with my mom definitely helped me grow up fast.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

There are too many people that depend on me. I’m too obligated. I’m in too far to get out.