Stephen King on maturity

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them⁠—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy…and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Cat’s Cradle (1963), Chapter 88

• Laughter

Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.

Democritus460–360 BCFreeman (1948), p. 152

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Out of My Later Years (1950), Ch. 2 “Self-Portrait” (1936), p. 5

• Age