"I am still every age I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and acstasies, these are still part of me, and always wil be. This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages... the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn in; to forget is a form of suicide. Far too many people misunderstant what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-two-year old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids feel that if this is what it meas to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup."
- Madeleine L'Engle