Is it because I'm a girl?"Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded. "Well, fuck you!" She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. "Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!" she turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. "This is something more than some diddly shit kids game like tag, or guns, or hide and go seek, and you know it, Bill! We're supposed to do this, that's part of it! And you're not going to cut me out just because I'm a girl, do you understand? You better. Or I'm leaving right now!

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up

stop now before i kill youa word to the wise from your friendPENNYWISE

You will look young when you feel young, but to simply feel that you are young will not always cause you to feel young. The real feeling of youth comes when we actually think in the consciousness of youth and give the realization of the now to every thought.

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?

No child should ever be too sad to play.