Adolescence
Quotes - Yes, I was obsessed with sex
“At
that age you think boys have as much personality as coat hangers and, you don't
notice their looks.
Then
you grow up.”
―
John Marsden, Tomorrow, When the War Began
“Girls
are always saying things like, “I’m so unhappy that I’m going to overdose on
aspirin,” but they’d be awfully surprised if they succeeded. They have no
intention of dying. At the first sight of blood, they panic.”
― Rachel
Klein, The Moth Diaries
“Adolescence
is the same tragedy being performed again and again. The only things that
change are the stage props.”
―
Lindsey Leavitt, Going Vintage
“...the
salient feature of the absurd age I was at--an age which for all its alleged
awkwardness, is prodigiously rich-- is that reason is not its guide, and the
most insignificant attributes of other people always appear to be
consubstantial with their personality. One lives among monsters and gods, a
stranger to peace of mind. There is scarcely a single one of our acts from that
time which we would not prefer to abolish later on. But all we should lament is
the loss of the spontaneity that urged them upon us. In later life, we see
things with a more practical eye, one we share with the rest of society; but
adolescence was the only time when we ever learned anything.”
―
proust
“There
is so much woman in many a girl and too much boy in many a man.”
―
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“I
assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to
flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.”
―
Marquis De Sade
“Later,
at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders,
caterpillars, and stems from the bucket.
"Not
what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up
nicely in about six, eight jars."
The
berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed
her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot
slowly.
I
leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow.
She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and
watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees.
"Does
them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them.
Though Elly likes her jam."
"Elly
doesn't like anything anymore."
The
knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the
pot.
"Mama,
Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole
berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for
Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore,
Mama."
Then
she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and
the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified,
her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran.
I
went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only
time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too
far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish
reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that
the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared,
that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the
ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the
funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for
refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child
heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could
fix it all back up like a busted toy.”
―
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
“After
all, there was something rather pleasant in knowing that you were
misunderstood. It made you feel different from everyone else.”
―
Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom
“Yes,
I was obsessed with sex, but which guy isn’t at seventeen? Blame our media or
our conservative society; the subject of sex is treated as if it is something
unnatural. By denouncing sex heavily, our society has made people wanting it
even more. Media, on the other hand, presents it as if it is something magical
but denied to most people. Moral policing too has done nothing good but
increased the lure of sex in the minds of the young by making it a taboo. In
short, a lot of hullabaloo has been created over the issue of sex, and I too
fell victim to the propaganda.”
―
Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit
“My
face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I'm perpetually surprised, but
there's nothing wrong with me that I can fix.”
―
David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
“My
mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.”
―
Walker Percy, The Second Coming
“The
hardest thing about adolescence is that everything seems too big. There's no
way to get context or perspective, ..... Pain and joy without limits. No one
can live like that forever, so experience finally comes to our rescue. We come
to know what we can endure, and also that nothing endures.”
―
Sara Paretsky, Bleeding Kansas
“All
my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or
damaged."
"Every
teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different
somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants.”
―
Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
“So
you love me," said Petra softly when the kiss ended.
I'm
a raging mass of hormones thet I'm too young to understand," said Bean.
"You're a female of a closely related species. According to all the best
primatologists, I really have no choice."
That's
nice," she said...”
―
Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets
“Americans
invented adolescence. It is not a natural phenomenon. Adolescence is a social
construct, created by an urban-industrial society that keeps its young at home
far past puberty. Teenage angst is a luxury if a successful modern human
conceit that isn't condoned by our superior species.”
―
Sarah Beth Durst, Drink, Slay, Love
“I
think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like
masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad
poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.”
―
Umberto Eco
“Young
people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent
rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more
ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.”
―
David & Leigh Eddings
“So
the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or
behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.”
―
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
“He
felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It
was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were
no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses
and nice tits.”
―
Jess C Scott, Take-Out, Part 1
“I
think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an
ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because
when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins
writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if
there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.”
―
Gertrude Stein, Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein
