I am still every age that 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 ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will 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 on; to forget is a form of suicide… Far too many people misunderstand 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-three-year-old means being grownup.

The adultification of today’s children is fucking tragic—the fact that kids want to wear designer labels? I didn’t give a fuck about that. My parents were just trying to get me to not eat insects when I was 9. I didn’t know what the fuck AllSaints was. When did kids stop eating mud? The whole point of being a kid is that you get to do shit you can’t do when you’re an adult. It’s downhill from here. I’m 22 now and I realize that my best years are behind me.