Top 35 Kelly Williams Brown Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’re a grown up, and you get to decide what behaviors affect you for five minutes versus what behaviors change you as a person.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

2. “Intentions are nice, but ultimately intentions don’t really matter because they only exist inside you.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

3. “This is the most difficult and important thing to accept if you wish to be a grown-up: You are not a Special Snowflake.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

4. “A big part of being a well-adjusted person is accepting that you can’t be good at everything.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

5. “Meaning to send a thank-you note but then not doing it is exactly the same as never thinking to send one – that person is still receiving zero thank you notes.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

6. “It is hard to convince people of this, but oatmeal truly is miraculous. It gives you an amazing amount of energy, like cocaine.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

7. “One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper. Toilet paper, up until this point, always just existed. And now it’s a finite resource, constantly in danger of extinction, that must be carefully tracked and monitored, like pandas?”

— Kelly Williams Brown

8. “People will come to care about you, but only if you give them a valid reason. Don’t assume they’ll give you love like your parents, emotional support like your best friend, and cheerful feedback like a soccer coach for seven-year-olds. Because they won’t, unless you give them good reason to. And even then, they still probably won’t.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

9. “A chef’s knife can do almost anything, if it’s of good quality.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

10. “Like heartbreak, these unpredictable crises are not something you should live in fear of. Perpetual fear won’t protect you. Fear is not a citronella candle; scary life happenings are not mosquitoes. They happen in ways we can’t predict, control or understand. The only guaranteed outcome of feeling scared all the time is that you will feel scared all the time.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

11. “Natural consequences is actually a parenting concept, but one I use on myself, because sometimes my ability to thoughtfully reflect on a difficult situation is in line with a four-year-old’s.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

12. “If it’s making a galloping noise, it’s probably a horse, not a zebra.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

13. “Pay attention to natural consequences, then learn to anticipate them.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

14. “Imagine rude people as jellyfish.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

15. “I tried, in my unhealthy way, to put an end to our ongoing discord. I twisted and turned and contorted and moved as quietly as I could, but it seemed that no matter what I did, I always upset him, with words or actions or inaction, in ways that I could not predict. I couldn’t be someone who conducted herself in a manner he found acceptable, who didn’t warrant constant criticism.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

16. “Step 35: Do not leave to crust for tomorrow what may be wiped up today.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

17. “Whether someone is short or tall or originally from Canada or gay or Asian or born to rich parents or redheaded or whatever – that’s not something they chose or cultivated in themselves, and it’s not something they work for. What makes someone good and valuable is not these traits. It’s the choices they make and the things they do.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

18. “Stand back, for safety, and also because – this is a very basic physics principle that, sometimes, still escapes us – when people exit the small space, there is more room for you and others to enter the small space, so let them flow out before you flow in. You will get there. You will.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

19. “Sooner or later, you will lock yourself out of your house. It’s just unavoidable.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

20. “Also, this sounds obvious, but rags can be laundered, albeit not with your other laundry. It’s gotta be a rag-only load, unless you are cool with your clothes being washed in all that detritus you removed from your countertops.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

21. “Whatever happens immediately post-graduation, chances are good that it will be at least a little disappointing.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

22. “If you’re like most people, your bed is the physical object in the world that you will touch the most. You spend a third of your life with that thing! It should be comfy. If you can scrape together five hundred dollars – maybe, say, from a tax return, or maybe put away forty dollars each month – you can sleep like a king for years and you will never, ever regret it.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

23. “Step 45: Do not keep things in your house that make you feel sad or bad.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

24. “The lure of a nice apartment is not justification for dropping your pet off at the shelter.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

25. “If you wouldn’t show or tell your mom, boss, and ex-boyfriend, then don’t put it on Facebook.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

26. “You are already way more of an adult than you think you are. Truly. Be good, be decent, be responsible, be kind. And don’t forget to send thank-you notes.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

27. “Maybe we all, at some point, find ourselves in the middle of a life that we do not recognize. Or maybe it’s just me. You go along to get along, you fake it ’til you make it, you follow the steps as you understand them and then, one day, you are the roadrunner off the cliff, still sprinting, supported by nothing but your own conviction that this is what one does. And then you are falling.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

28. “Here is what I’m trying to tell you: Adult isn’t a noun, it’s a verb. It’s the act of making correctly those small decisions that fill our day.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

29. “Whatever you do, do not allow an army of white wine bottles to amass under your kitchen sink, like those terra-cotta soldiers, except made of shame.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

30. “Most things that feel like an emergency or a disaster at age twenty-one are not, actually, an emergency or a disaster.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

31. “People aren’t good at processing important things when they’re naked.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

32. “One who has many dead bugs trapped between the windowpanes in your bedroom, which doesn’t make sense, because how did they even get there?”

— Kelly Williams Brown

33. “You don’t need to make your tastes a self-conscious statement about who you are. Just unapologetically like the things you like.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

34. “Or you graduate law school with glorious visions of the important work you’ll do for the Southern Poverty Law Center, but find yourself photocopying briefs in Shreveport.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

35. “It’s not as though the world hates you- it just has no idea who you are.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

36. “When you begin at the beginning, any progress you make is yours.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

37. “Jellyfish do not respond to reason, they usually don’t respond to kindness, and they will always show up to ruin a fun party if possible.”

— Kelly Williams Brown

38. “One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper.”

— Kelly Williams Brown