I vividly remember watching women in films when I was nine or 10, picturing them being what I'd be like as an adult. I had these real female crushes on certain actresses. And I'd watch them, thinking, 'One day, I'll be that. One day I'll be a woman.'
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'
The most important thing for me is the thing I strive for. But I also hope when I play my songs for people - adult, children, mostly children - that they feel mighty, they feel noble, they feel like warriors. And they feel like they can do anything in the world because that's how I feel.
Very, very few adults possess so much charm that they can long be supported by another adult based on that attribute alone.
My father is not that comfortable with children, but he's a terrific father for an adult.
Kids, adults, men, women, everybody has a relationship with Mickey Mouse.
Kids are naturally curious about what they don't know, or don't understand, or what is foreign to them. They only learn to be frightened of those differences when an adult influences them to behave that way and censors that natural curiosity.
Teenagers are very dark, I think. That's all the goth and emo stuff. They're experiencing a lot of stuff that adults experience, but in a much more raw way. It's that extremity that I'm interested in, to be able to go down so far and come up so quickly.
As a mentor and an advocate, I've seen no end to the ways that childless people can contribute to the lives and well-being of kids - and adults, for that matter.
My dad worked three jobs and was a teacher. My mother was a teacher's aid, making, like, $3 an hour. My father went on to get his master's and became active in all these minority engineering programs. And my mother started running for public office. All that happened after the kids were adults. But I'm insanely proud of them.
As I said, I spent most of my adult life thinking I didn't have a vote, and therefore that what I thought didn't matter.
I don't need adult supervision.
When you have a big family, certainly with strong personalities, you feel like you have to fall into a role, and I didn't want to be the little sister or the daughter, because that's who you become as an adult.
As I read more and more fairy tales as an adult, I found massive collusion between their 'subjects' and those in my fiction: childhood, nature, sexuality, transformation. I realized that it wasn't by accident that I was drawn to their narrative structure and motifs.
I make M-rated games for adults, you know, with guys wearing sunglasses at night and trench coats.
Children are often better actors than adults because they have a greater capacity for believing in a situation.
I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never.
I've always been a big guy, whether it's been a fat kid, a fat young adult, or a fat adult. I was always sort of... I guess the term would be 'popular.' I never dealt with a lot of name-calling or any of the bullying you'd think a fat kid might have to deal with.
My mother told me, 'Son, nobody else but God knows.' And that's what I'm about - reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That's what I do.
Calling a book 'young adult' is only important in that it can help get a book to the right reader. After that, it's a useless abstraction and should be discarded.
Adult novels are as ephemeral as newspapers. Children's books stay in print for decades.
I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.
I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do.
My parents called me their wise little baby. I was mature when I was 4 or 5. My brother and sister were older, so I was raised by four adults.
Among my books, the ones that sell best are for readers between the ages of 8 and 12. According to a study by the Association of American Publishers, the largest area of industry growth in 2014 was in the children and young adult category.
As kids, our experiences shape our opinions of ourselves and the world around us, and that's who we become as adults.
I didn't finish high school. I tried to as an adult, but with all this touring, I had to quit.
What's become a big theme in my music is my dad as a narrative character. I never had the opportunity to understand our relationship in a more adult capacity. The unknown is great material for any creative outlet.
Doing 'Young Adult' was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors.
Kids who evolve into creative adults tend to have a strong moral compass.
Every day, I get e-mails from kids who want a tree - a world away from the adult world.
I did not even go to kindergarten; I just started first grade when I was five and started reading right away. I don't know how it all worked, but I had a lot of adults and older siblings around me. So, I guess I was probably introduced to what one would be introduced to at that time in kindergarten.
I think younger readers connect so readily to animal characters because they share a certain vulnerability, particularly when it comes to adult humans, who can be a rather unpredictable lot.
Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.
We don't have one of those houses where there's a rope that separates the kids' area from the adult area. There's a happy medium. It's all about fabric choices, accessories.
Adults spend $500 billion on games and leisure activity each year, and some adults lament that kids get $15 billion for toys.