"Critics who treat the term 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of 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... 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, from "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," as published in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, quoted in C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, by Walter Hooper, HarperCollins 1996, p. 397.