The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964
Archive
Quotes
I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1852There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain, 1876I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
—Margaret Atwood, 1976The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.
—John F. Kennedy, 1960Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.
—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923It is more blessed to give than to receive.
—Acts of the Apostles, c. 80Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke, 1973The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63