“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely
descriptive term, cannot be adult 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. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in
moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But
to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern
about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. 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.”

― C. S. Lewis

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely
descriptive term, cannot be adult 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. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in
moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But
to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern
about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. 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.”

― C. S. Lewis