“Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.”

“The late Middle Ages not merely has a successful middle class—it is in fact a middle-class period.”

“When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you”

“Childhood and adulthood were not factors of age but states of mind.”

“Marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion.”

“Reading more books will only confuse you more and you will be dreaming about success instead of becoming successful yourself.”

“No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you've done. You wonder what it is you've become.”

“The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.”

“If you had an unhappy childhood, you will always want to sleep late in the morning.”

“Pills are the great infantilizers of our time. Adulthood can be wearying, and so some grow nostalgic about childhood dependencies.”