“What more had he become? Sure, he had a wife, he had children, he had a business, a house, but Elliot thought that by the time he was in his forties he would have more. The cruelest part of becoming middle-aged was that it came on the heels of one’s own youth, not some other, better youth, and that it was too late to start over.”

On paper, it seems Elliot has the things most people in his society want. Still, Elliot feels like he’s missing out on something, though he can’t pinpoint what that something is. This emphasizes Elliot’s inability to live in the present moment and his internal struggle about what he wants from life. Elliot’s aging bothers him, and he worries that he hasn’t accomplished enough. The fact that he frames his life within societal norms, like a family and a career, also characterizes him as someone who needs validation.

“Some people wanted to get out of their hometowns, in order to prove themselves. That was the old-fashioned way, to set out for the big city on foot and drive home in a Rolls-Royce. Elliot felt exactly the opposite. What would success matter, if it happened somewhere else? He wanted witnesses.”

Just as with the previous quote, these lines show Elliot’s need for acknowledgment and praise. Later, it’s revealed that Elliot is stuck on the idea that his mother has never believed in him, which became the driving force behind his pursuit of external happiness. He believes in the fallacy that you can only admire yourself if others also admire you. Straub implies that Elliot needs to find peace and happiness within himself rather than through external influences.

“This was what the Sullivans did. They bought old things by the bushel and, through their touch, transformed them into something desirable, something new. August wished that his parents could work their magic on him too.”

Robin, as August, feels sad by her lack of friends. This quote demonstrates that she’s internalized her loneliness as indicative of her self-worth. She doesn’t know how to solve the problem of her loneliness. Her family’s secondhand store symbolizes the idea that Robin, like old and used belongings, wants to be renewed and made likable. At this point in the novel, readers may assume that Robin’s concerns are about her sense of isolation and self-worth in general, as they would not be aware that Robin is a transgender girl struggling with remaining closeted in public.

“So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn’t matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being.”

The title of the novel, All Adults Here, signifies the centrality of the adult experience. In this quote, Straub also acknowledges the significant impact of childhood on the adult identity. Because adults have more autonomy in their lives, it’s difficult to accept that their feelings and actions may be a result of how they grew up. However, childhood is a formative time in everyone’s life, and it can impact the future in significant ways.

“[…] as soon as Astrid felt their skin touch, she understood what had been brewing, that it had been there all the while, just under the surface, like a child who understands a language fully before they can speak it. When Birdie kissed her good night after the movie, she kissed her on the lips, and Astrid was ready.”

Astrid’s connection with Birdie is characterized here as natural and beautiful. Though Astrid spent most of her life identifying as straight, her connection with Birdie evokes an innocence of knowledge without metacognition. This adds an authenticity to her connection with Birdie, which transcends identification and explanation. Straub uses a simile to parallel Astrid’s love for Birdie with a child who becomes aware of language, emphasizing the inherent nature of her attraction to Birdie.

“It wasn’t small, being in love—she was in love—for the second time in her life, and at this point, when falling in love seemed less likely than, well, getting hit by a school bus.”

Astrid’s relationship with Birdie represents New Beginnings. Astrid is an age that many people dismiss as being too old for new experiences. Birdie and Astrid prove that there is never a deadline for happiness or love. Astrid compares Barbara’s unlikely death to her own unlikely second romance, as she is fixated on the parallels between Barbara’s life and her own. Barbara’s death emphasizes the fleeting nature of life and the importance of Embracing Your True Self, a message that Astrid takes to heart.

“She thought she’d want to stay in the city, maybe, or maybe not. But that was five years away, and five years ago she was eight years old, and so five years sounded like an eternity. Now, instead of any of that, there was just a giant empty space, like her future had been abducted by aliens. A question mark floating in the sky.”

In this quote, Straub plays with the concept of age and growth. Cecelia is enduring a difficult time, but she’s only 13 years old and still has a lot of life to experience. When she puts her age into perspective, she realizes that only five years ago she was a small child. This implies that in another five years, Cecelia might be able to look back at being 13 years old with more awareness and generosity to herself. This quote highlights the unknowability of the future and the chaos of being too young to understand life as a journey.

“It was impossible to know what went on in anyone else’s home, behind closed doors and behind closed mouths.”

This quote represents Straub’s overall message about the loneliness of adult life. Astrid contemplates the details of Barbara and Bob’s marriage, but acknowledges that she has no way of knowing for sure what went on in their life. Only after Barbara’s death does Astrid learn that Barbara chose to embrace her true self and pursue a fresh start, a parallel to the fact that Astrid has resisted embracing her own authenticity and opening up about her relationship with Birdie. People are inherently private about their inner conflicts, but this is often to their own detriment as it blocks them from receiving support. In this novel, people keep their true feelings and lives to themselves in an effort to cope, but Straub implies that the best way to overcome challenges is to trust and rely on others.

“People talked about coming out like it was one thing that happened, like it had to do with who you wanted to have sex with, full stop, the end. But there were other things, too, that one needed to say. Fear controlled so many things.”

Straub emphasizes here that coming to terms with one’s sexuality and being public about the journey is more complex than it seems. Because sexuality is so closely tied to sex, it’s easy to think of sexuality as an identity tied to bodily functions and desires. But Astrid has learned that sexuality is so much more than physical attraction. But because “fear [controls] so many things,” being vulnerable about feelings makes coming out even more difficult than it already is.

“That was the very worst part of being an adult, understanding that there was no fairness in the world, no unseen hand on the Ouija board. There was only the internet and the paths you chose for whatever stupid reason that seemed right at the time, when you had one extra drink at a party, or were feeling lonely at exactly the moment that someone else was too. And wasn’t everyone, always?”

This novel deals with the acceptance of time. For Porter, that means looking back on her past choices with consternation as she restarts her affair with Jeremy. She acknowledges that adult life is unfair and lonely, a relay of challenges, unlike youth, when the future is full of fairness and possibility. The conflicts that adults like Porter face highlight the idea that being an adult is a tireless and difficult journey, which is why it’s so important to seize happiness when it is available.

“Cecelia ran up the steps as lightly as possible, trying to project an air of easy self-confidence. This was the plan: pretend to be the person you’d like to be. No one knew any better, and so Cecelia could be confident and cool if she said she was.”

Representing the theme of New Beginnings, Cecelia is eager to make her new start in Clapham worth the pain and feelings of abandonment. She wants to live authentically, but she also wants to project an air of confidence in the hopes that she can fake it till she makes it. No one knows Cecelia, so she can be the type of person she wants to be, but she also wants to avoid the heartbreak and bullying that happened in her last school. In this quote, Straub emphasizes how public perception of a person influences and intertwines with their perceptions of themselves.

“All of a sudden—forty years of parenting in!—she felt like she was on shaky ground. If her son felt this way about his children, if they were making mistakes, how many other mistakes must she have made without admitting them to herself? Her children were the way they were because of all the things she had done and all the things she had not done.”

Astrid struggles with her past decisions as a mother. She sees how her children view their lives as adults and wonders if different parenting decisions could have set them up for success and happiness. Astrid’s line of questioning is a necessary part of parenthood: always wondering how your influence over your children impacted them. For Astrid, these questions are also motivated by the fact that she doesn’t know her kids as well as she would like to, so she doesn’t know quite what’s going on in their lives.

“Sometimes a lie wasn’t a lie when it got you closer to the truth. Sometimes a lie was more like a wish, or a prayer.”

Robin’s character represents the theme of Embracing Your True Self. Living authentically requires vulnerability and deep self-knowledge; ironically, Robin grasps both of these things better than most of the adults. Robin’s identity as August is not a lie, but a cover-up that allows her to exist without fear of bullying. She can’t, and shouldn’t, keep herself hidden for long, but while she is figuring out how to be Robin, she can use August as her disguise. Robin’s “lie” therefore is a desire to be her true self in a navigable context.

“How she felt, with her busy hands and quiet mouth and all the extra oxygen that the Hudson Valley had to offer, was that her main problem was trying to be agreeable. A good girl, whatever the situation.”

Cecelia is learning how to balance her moral code within the confines of socially acceptable behavior. Cecelia is old enough to know right from wrong, but she still doesn’t understand how to fight for what is right without literally fighting. Cecelia doesn’t want to be seen as a problem, but she also doesn’t want to be seen as dismissible and weak. Cecelia has internalized her society’s misogynistic ideas about “nice girls” and “agreeable girls,” but Cecelia can’t identify with those expectations because Nicky took pains to raise her in defiance of societal convention. This quote highlights Cecelia’s maturity, sense of self, and desire to do good in the world in a real way.

“Cecelia felt like a much larger alarm should sound every time someone in school said or thought or did something enormous and life-changing, something that their adult selves would remember for the rest of their lives, every time a bowling ball began its heavy roll. But of course then that alarm would sound constantly, all day long, and no one would be able to learn anything at all.”

Cecelia thinks this after Robin comes out to her as transgender; once again, she has been entrusted with the weight of a friend’s important secret, though this one is very different from Katherine’s. This quote emphasizes the life-changing growth that pre-teens and teenagers go through. Everyone Cecelia’s age is going through major transformations, so much so that these metaphorical bells would never cease. Notably, the adults in this novel also undergo life-changing transformations, emphasizing the idea that one is never done developing.

“That was the truth of a successful marriage that Astrid understood: All you had to do was not get divorced or die! Everything else was fair game. Taken was taken. All love settled. Not settling for something less than you deserved, just settled down, the way breath settles in a sleeping body, not doing more than necessary.”

Straub explores the idea of settling for a life versus settling down within a life. Astrid didn’t have an unhappy marriage, but her generation’s view on marriage defined her life for many years. All her life, successful marriages were about not separating. Astrid admires Barbara Baker for breaking away from the concept to pursue true happiness, and Barbara inspires her to do the same. Astrid doesn’t want anyone in her life to settle for a love that is not true or a life that makes them unhappy; however, she also understands that life is not a fairy tale. Astrid believes it’s important to understand when life is good, even if it’s not a perfect fantasy. This contrasts with Porter, who regrets turning her back on the choices available to her in her youth because she viewed them as “settling” for less than perfect.

“That was the problem with being part of a family: Everyone could mean well and it could still be a disaster. Love didn’t cure all, not in terms of missed communication and hurt feelings during an otherwise uneventful dinner conversation. Love couldn’t change the misread tone of a text message or a quick temper.”

As Astrid reflects on Nicky’s mistrust of her, Straub explores how familial love does not guarantee closeness. Loving a sibling, a parent, or a child is not the same thing as knowing them and liking them, and a familial connection does not mean one is obligated to maintain a close bond. Conflicts are deep in families, and love can’t always fix those conflicts. This means that it’s important for families to continue working on their dynamics over time, as the Strick family learns to do.

“The older Astrid got, the more she understood that she and her parents and she and her children were as close as people could be, that generations slipped away quickly, and that the twenty-five years in between her and her mother and the thirtyish years in between her and her children were absolutely nothing […]. It happened before you could blink. Her children had been children, and now they were adults; they were all adults here, now.”

Astrid realizes how valuable each year is: not just her own life but the years between herself and others. Time becomes tighter the older you get, but this is balanced by the wisdom one gains through experience and age. With time, the vast chasm that differentiates a parent from a child closes, allowing individuals to meet on a more even level: as adults. This lesson also emphasizes the need to appreciate life because life goes by so quickly.

“It was hard enough when it was your own story, but telling someone else’s? Cecelia knew it was both indefensible and the only truly right thing to do. She had to betray her friend to make sure nothing worse happened to her.”

Cecelia is still learning how to navigate right from wrong when those boundaries are murky. She knows that she was right to protect her friend, but Katherine’s shockingly negative reaction to her “betrayal” makes Cecelia doubt herself. As an adult, she will be able to look back on this moment and understand she saved her friend, no matter Katherine’s feelings about it; as a youth, however, she still grapples with the guilt of taking Katherine’s choice away. Cecelia has learned that doing the right thing doesn’t always feel right, which adds to her layers of confusion. This quote is important because it captures Cecelia in metacognitive, self-reflective growth.

“It was Cecelia’s being in the house, and seeing Rachel, all these things that made her feel like she had time traveled back to her youth, when in reality those years were gone, gone, gone. And she knew she didn’t miss them.”

This quote reveals major growth in Porter’s development. Porter has been reeling over her past, thinking about all the decisions she could have made that would have led her to a different, less lonely and regretful life. But looking back to her past is fruitless. Porter finally understands that her youth is behind her and there is nothing about that time of uncertainty and petty dramas that she should miss. Porter finally embraces herself as a powerful, independent adult and lets go of that past, choosing instead to focus on her New Beginnings.

“He clenched his teeth, a habit he’d developed as an angry teenager. Why had he been so angry? Why hadn’t his mother helped? It was so easy to look backward and see the way through the maze, and so much harder when the way out was still in front of you.”

This quote describes Elliot shortly before his long-awaited conversation with Astrid, in which they finally connect on an emotional level. These lines emphasize Straub’s message about time and the present moment. It is easy to look back and, with the power of hindsight, spot all the different moments that can be blamed for how things ended up. In contrast, the only way to move forward is to trust your instincts and trust in others. However, dwelling on the past accomplishes nothing; it won’t get you out of “the maze,” as there is no turning around and going back. The only way to progress is to do the hard thing and keep moving forward.

“This was the job of a parent: to fuck up, over and over again. This was the job of a child: to grow up anyway.”

Straub resolves the endless cycle of questioning parenting decisions with this quote. Parents will make mistakes because they are figuring out their own lives while simultaneously helping their children figure out life. It is impossible to predict the future, and to know which choices and actions will leave lasting marks on a child; parents can only try and do what’s best for their children. Children, for their part, must become adults eventually—this means making their choices and deciding for themselves how to live. This quote reveals that parents are not wholly responsible for how their children grow up: that children have autonomy and self-responsibility too. The relationship between parent and child is influential but ultimately mutable.

“It was temporary. Everything was temporary. It was an illusion to believe otherwise. But nevertheless, it did feel good.”

This quote concludes Barbara Baker’s narrative in the only chapter told from her perspective. It is a foreshadowing of the illusion of the future, because indeed Barbara’s new, freer chapter is temporary. This quote is also a celebration of living life to the fullest. Even though life and its individual chapters are fleeting, when it feels good, it’s beautiful. Barbara does not know that she will soon die, but she understands that nothing lasts forever; despite this, she is happy with her decision to embrace her true self and pursue New Beginnings. Straub uses Barbara to emphasize the importance of living in the moment, as one never knows which will be the last.