(no subject)

[mrsbrown]

Today, thanks to popelaksmi i had a chance to find the quote I've been half remembering for ages:

When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

- CS Lewis

But searching for it made it better, because I found out that its a modification of a quote from the Bible:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I Corinthians 13:11

and to read it in context makes me feel much better about my reading habits.

Critics who treat "adult" as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.... When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-- "On Three Ways of Writing for Children", in On Stories

I really like his comment about fairy tales, I used to feel similarly about books like "Anne of Green Gables" , "What Katy Did" and teenage fantasy novels- by Tamora Pierce.

There, I've come out. I must be a grown up!

Comments

Classic quote

[erudito.livejournal.com]

It's a classic quote, which I found very cheering years ago when I first came across it.

C S Lewis was a close friend of J R R Tolkien, with similar interests.