177 quotes found
“Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.”
“The drone in my ear, its like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the basement walls, heads tucked into...”
“Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the center of it.”
“It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike...”
“Childhood introduces children to the wounds of the world.”
“I learned that adults were not soaring gods, but rather back-yard birds with broken wingtips.When you are thirteen, about to free-fall into the real world, discovering the broken wingtips is terrif...”
“Except that today, oblivious to everyone, there is a hair standing tall inside his shorts: a single hair: long, black and shining. Sprouting out of nowhere, it stands rebelliously erect on his tiny...”
“At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, ...”
“Once in my room I don't have a goddamn clue what to do.”
“Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.”
“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself c...”
“But I could not fully admit it, even then. The way Suzanne's face looked as she watched him - I wanted to be with her. I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they...”
“Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy - moving slowly and with her head down, came up the gravel driveway. The sight of her p...”
“We skip school and we ditch chores. We haunt shopping malls and grocery stores. House parties grow dull, but Amy's boyfriend is a dealer and we find ways to pass the time.”
“Why, I wondered, do people who at one time or another have all been young themselves, who ought therefore to know better, generalize so suavely and so mendaciously about the golden hours of youth--...”
“In youth, our blood rises and becomes volatile. Desire, worry, and anxiety increase. External circumstances now direct the rise and fall of emotions. Will and intention become constrained by social...”
“It's hard, omigod remember? Being a kid.”
“I was there laughing and joking with everyone else, but its like there was some part of mestanding back, watching, thinking, Is this as good as it gets?”
“Its hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and theyre disappointed if we cant share their surprise ...”
“How do you teach a classroom of Sybils who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you?”
