I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.

I still don't know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.

Life is like this roller coaster you can’t wait to be tall enough and old enough to get on. But when you get on it you realize you’re afraid of roller coasters.

I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.

She knew him in that way you can only know a person as a child. Like if you cracked away the adult shell, you'd find that child, happily sitting inside, smiling at you.

I realize now, I was learning how to walk as well. I haven’t mastered the steps, I fall too. But im on my path, my path... and one day that path... will take me to her.

Step-parents, those fairy tale villains,Have been given a bad name.They're easy targets.When the family goes awryHow easy to blame them.I was blessed by the right steps...

I liked being with the books: they reminded me of how many ways of thinking existed outside my own - how small and fleeting my pulse was when set alongside those ageing spines.

Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.

[Jo to her mother] I knew there was mischief brewing. I felt it and now it's worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family.

Adults tend to repress their pleasure. Sad to say, I think we become adults only through disappointment, grief, and lies. So of course gradually we become tough, less sensitive.

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

And why is it that so many years later it is so easy to distinguish the bullies from their prey? Adult bodies surrounding the children of long ago. The years have changed nothing.

Growing up, I loved the tale of Peter Rabbit and also books on Pippi Longstocking. Pippi was a girl who had so much fun and was very daring. My sons loved all the Dr. Seuss books