Adolescence Quotes

“At thirteen I learned from Roza's stolen book that girls don't have to be sweet little creatures, that they could in fact be angry and dark and sexual.”
― Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat

“Childhood is a race to find out who you really are, before you become the person who you are going to be. Not everybody wins.”
― Alice Feeney, Daisy Darker

“It’s a contradiction: Kids have to be taught how to use tools that will help them reduce their work-time, without it actually reducing their work-time.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“Background music for my adolescence. Musical wallpaper.”
― Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular: Stories

“One of the greatest challenges of a parent is to save their teenagers from themselves, while the culture is declaring that it is trying to save them from their parents.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Here, every breath is heard, every evil thought is known. It might be beautiful to look at, but it is abysmal to exist in; a sweet, sad dream. And while I could think of a million places that I would rather be, I fear that I will never have the nerve to leave. I fear that Crossmore is too deep in me, and I would not know how to exist elsewhere.”
― Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

“In March 1908, I was thirteen, which is such an intensely awkward and self-absorbed age that I almost remember almost nothing about that year, except that I grew four inches and Wilda made me start wearing a terrible wire contraption over my breasts.”
― Alix E. Harrow

“I was just about as lonely and wretched as any thirteen-year-old has ever been, which is very lonely and wretched, indeed.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Like so many sons and daughters before and after him, Henry had returned home feeling mature and confident only to be reduced to adolescence in a matter of hours.”
― Lorenz Wagner, The Boy Who Felt Too Much: How a renowned neuroscientist and his son changed our view of autism forever

“School authorities warn students that any deviant behavior on a child’s part is irresponsible because it could have severe and long-lasting consequences for their future, and then they enforce unreasonably harsh disciplinary standards that have severe and long-lasting consequences for the child’s future. That’s not a warning, it’s a promise.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“A hypercompetitive environment sets parents up for dreams of champion children, and then for almost inevitable heartbreak. Millennials of all abilities have grown up in the shadow of these expectations, expectations that by definition, only a very few of us can fulfill.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“It's dangerous by the river.
Girls aren't safe on their own.
And maybe there were right. Still, it felt good to be silent. And it felt good to be alone. And it felt good to be uncontained, the way a bird must feel when it realizes that the thing constraining it was nothing more than an eggshell--delicate and fragile, and just waiting to be cracked open.”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

“היא הביטה בהם ארוכות ויכלה לדמות את השיניים הטוחנות בוקעות מעצם הלסת של הגולגולת, רחבות וסדורות כמו שאפשר לראות בצילום רנטגן. כאילו הנוקשות של עצם הלסת חתמה את ילדותם והבליטה את החשד ואת הכעס, כלומר את הבוז לעולם. אחר כך תיקנה את עצמה: לאו דווקא נוקשים ואטומים. אולי רק מסוגרים ובוטים מדי, פגועים מדי ולא אהובים מדי. ואחר כך הוסיפה: אבל ככה רוצים אותם, לוחמים או שוטרים, עורכי דין קרי מזג, או אנשי עסקים, או חרקים תקשורתיים שנופחים את נשמתם לעיני כול ברשתות החברתיות. לבסוף הפכה בדעתה: בכל זאת, אצל אחדים מהם ניבטת כמיהה בעיניים.”
― עילי ראונר, בשבח המלחמה

“Faut croire qu'il a pas encore fini de se vider de son eau, Émile, ses yeux menacent de redéborder. Il pue la peur. Au collège, le pire, c'est pas les cours ; c'est tout ce qu'il y a entre. La consistance même du temps y est différente. Les récrés sont des éternités. C'est pas qu'on s'y emmerde, non, non, l'ennui, ça a au moins quelque chose de moelleux, de presque confortable. Nous, on passe chaque seconde de chaque minute à lutter contre la flippe du faux pas et à faire semblant qu'on s'amuse.”
― Christelle Dabos, Ici et seulement Ici

“Adolescence, while it’s a place I like to visit periodically, shouldn’t be a lifestyle. Tragic maturity, while appropriate at times, will kill your soul if practiced perpetually.”
― T.C. Luoma, The Testosterone Principles 2: Manhood and Other Stuff

“During the period of her adolescence, her burgeoning womanhood, high school and throughout college, her awareness of the other sex had been an involuntary thing that crept up on her unasked for and unwanted. She would come into contact with these guys, or boys really, who she really didn’t even like all that much. She could discern the weakness in their characters in a heartbeat, see into the core of their insecurities with ease. Figure out what they were hungry for in life and discern their superficialities. And yet it was these guys who would make her palms moist with sweat when they approached, whose presence sucked the air out of her chest, whose off hand comments to her made her speechless and inarticulate. Not the top-of-the-class guy with his subtle opinions and depth of character, but the attractive, muscular idiot.”
― Hannah Matus, A Second Look

“Gef became the receptacle of all Irving’s misspent wants and frustrations, a focal point for the things the family could not say aloud. He could have Jim’s broader knowledge, Voirrey’s adolescence, and Margaret’s witchery. He could be the son from whom Jim had become estranged, the friend Voirrey did not find in Peel, the desirous confidante that Margaret could not find in her husband.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Curious Case of the Talking Mongoose

“Having never smoked, I hacked after inhaling. The taste was bitter, a flavor marking the twilight of my childhood.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Bastard of Beverly Hills: A Memoir

“In adolescence I searched diligently—even dangerously—for some sheet-music kind of love that would fulfil the erotic dreams the literature read to me in my childhood had coloured so romantically. In this fantasy I would be the cherished object of some great man's total preoccupation. In return I would become his perfumed slave. Of course I was willing to adopt this attitude of abject prostration only before someone who never asked me to do anything I didn't like.”
― Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant

“Refrain (by Jan Warren)

Pick up your clothes, make your bed, is that a basket of ironing stuffed into your closet? How can you find anything in there? Clean it out, you´re not going to the park until it's done and I want you to take your sister with you, don't give me that look, just wait until your father comes home; I've never seen such a lazy kid, how did I ever get lucky enough to have you to deal with, you've got a chip on your shoulder; no, you can´t spend the night, because I said so, straighten that bedspread; wake up, you´ll be late for school, come right home after, I need you to go to the store and don't take forever, dinner has to be sometime tonight; set the table, make the salad, clean out the wastepaper basket, feed the dogs, sweep the floor, don't let the flies in, close that door, do you think money grows on trees, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; who was that on the phone, why is he calling here? don´t talk to strangers, who was that walking with you, you better not have them hanging around, because I said so, you're too young, he's a boy, that's different, because I said so, that skirt is too short, take off that makeup, you look like a hussy in those fishnet stockings, where did you get that, you'll have to take it back, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; the store called me today--you've taken practically nude pictures, you better stop or I'll tell your father, you're getting too big for your britches young lady, nice girls don't do things like that, keep going and you'll see what happens... don't give me that look...”
― Hettie Jones, Aliens at the Border: the Writing Workshop, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility

“Refrain (by Jan Warren)

Pick up your clothes, make your bed, is that a basket of ironing stuffed into your closet? How can you find anything in there? Clean it out, you're not going to the park until it's done and I want you to take your sister with you, don't give me that look, just wait until your father comes home; I've never seen such a lazy kid, how did I ever get lucky enough to have you to deal with, you've got a chip on your shoulder; no, you can't spend the night, because I said so, straighten that bedspread; wake up, you'll be late for school, come right home after, I need you to go to the store and don't take forever, dinner has to be sometime tonight; set the table, make the salad, clean out the wastepaper basket, feed the dogs, sweep the floor, don't let the flies in, close that door, do you think money grows on trees, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; who was that on the phone, why is he calling here? don't talk to strangers, who was that walking with you, you better not have them hanging around, because I said so, you're too young, he's a boy, that's different, because I said so, that skirt is too short, take off that makeup, you look like a hussy in those fishnet stockings, where did you get that, you'll have to take it back, don't give me that look, just wait till your father gets home; the store called me today--you've taken practically nude pictures, you better stop or I'll tell your father, you're getting too big for your britches young lady, nice girls don't do things like that, keep going and you'll see what happens...don't give me that look...”
― Hettie Jones, Aliens at the Border: the Writing Workshop, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility

“We push off the ground and break into a run. It is not a race, it’s just running. All we need to do is simply feel our bodies splitting the air.”
― Sohn Won-Pyung

“The rage in his eyes was of the raw, pure sort that only adolescents can feel. It is rage that doesn’t count the cost.”
― Stephen King

“When a woman chooses to marry, she puts her life into his hands. When she chooses not to marry, she must be ready to put her life into her own hands. These quarrels are petty and tiresome, I grant you that, but there is something to be learned in them. They have a use.”
― Cynthia Voigt, The Callender Papers

“Adolescence is a period when the social landscape undergoes a massive shift. Suddenly, it’s not just about family, it’s about peers and where one stands in the hierarchy among them. The need for acceptance becomes necessary, and it feels as if one’s survival depends on it.”
― David Durand

“Adolescence is a period when the social landscape undergoes a massive shift. Suddenly, it’s not just about family, it’s about peers and where one stands in the hierarchy among them. The need for acceptance becomes necessary, and it feels as if one’s survival depends on it.”
― David Durand, B.E.T. On It: A Psychological Approach to Coaching Gen Z and Beyond

“Once status, self-image, and the opinions of others are prioritized above all else, players become increasingly on edge. Performance spaces are seen as dangerous, and players feel threatened by the possibility of not being enough. Once they feel this danger, their playfulness decreases.”
― David Durand, B.E.T. On It: A Psychological Approach to Coaching Gen Z and Beyond

“The pursuit of perfectionism and the fear of making mistakes hinder an athlete’s performance and rob them of the joy of play, replacing play with survival.”
― David Durand, B.E.T. On It: A Psychological Approach to Coaching Gen Z and Beyond

“Pas besoin d’avoir soi-même des enfants, nous en passons tous par là : on est adolescent tant que l’on croit que les autres ne comprennent rien. Puis on s’aperçoit que soi-même on n’y comprend rien non plus. C’est que l’on est devenu adulte.”
― Fabien Maréchal, L'Attendeur (de Première classe)

“Us intellectuals keep anti-social hours. It does us good.”
― Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4