Quotes about coming-of-age

I was an American girl I possessed what our culture valued most-independance and blind courage.

Fuck Kerouac he would write his own story.

Say no! I thought. Say you want yourself all for your own self. Say that you have no specific country, say that you are important without any story from above, say that your home is with me and the other girls up in the sky.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame...

There were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an even progress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery merging and blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes... He felt that it would take all time, more than he could ever spare, to glue these strange cumbersome pictures into the scrap-book of his life.

There were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an even progress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery merging and blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes...

There's something to say about inspiration - when it comes into your life...the feeling is insatiable.

The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.

Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.

Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.

I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.

Don't think about that. Just believe I'll be okay.

But sometimes you have to make a decision with your heart instead of your head, and that’s what I did. I know I’ve made the right decision even if it takes my brain a little while to catch up to my heart.

As I watch Nicholas make his way back to his truck, I know one thing: this boy is going to make my life very interesting. I feel as if a fragment of the old me broke away tonight and disappeared, and I’m finally, truly beginning my new life.

College isn't half as much fun as they told us it was going to be.""It's not one-hundredth as much fun.

Can’t count on no miracles. Sometimes, you just got to have a plan.

The kinds of jobs a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old can get are not worth doing. They pay shit and suck.

He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.

A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle.

Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

As for learning to wear high heels, no need to worry. I've got no tolerance for those dreadful things. If God wanted us girls tottering around like a bunch of drunken sailors, we'd have been born wearing stilts!

I have certainly heard of the Subtle Art of Shutting Up, but I can't say I've practiced it all that much. I greatly prefer the underappreciated genius of Speaking My Mind. I figure if someone doesn't like what I have to say, they shouldn't put their ears in close proximity to my mouth.

What's all this nonsense about odd vision and not fitting in? There are plenty worse things in this world than not fitting in--like fitting in way too much. You strike me as a real original, Izzy Malone, in a world that loves carbon copies. If you think you beautified something, I believe you. I've never understood why folks love safe, neutral colors so much. Colors are what make this world worth living in.

Sometimes I think teachers like Ms. Harmer view creativity as something dirty and slightly embarrassing, and would prefer to turn kids into people who color inside the lines.Generally speaking, I don't care much for lines.

P.S. Please don't call me Isabella. That name belongs to a really pretty girl who never wrecks her clothes and who never gets dirt under her fingernails. That's definitely not me. My name is Izzy.

Your mother would have more luck winning her election than teaching you how to be charming. Izzy Malone, going to charm school! Are you going to walk across the room with a book stuck on your head?""No, it's not like that at all," I said as he doubled over with laughter. "And I really don't see what's so funny.""It's just that"--he gasped--"it would be like teaching a hippo to wear high heels!

Words are a weapon, and rotten kids like Tyler Jones get a free pass when it comes to using them because the marks they leave are invisible. Why don't more adults realize that?

Turns out, most girls would rather put on lip gloss than play with sand toads.

The bracelet and the first charm appeared the day I punched Austin Jackson in the nose. I didn't mean to slug him. His face just got in my way. It was a bruising end to a disastrous first month in middle school.

It's sad that bad things have to happen in order for us to stop and look around.

Mending a broken heart isn't easy. It's messy and complicated, but when it's finished, it's stronger than ever.

Happiness comes in many forms. Whether through a passion for something or someone, it makes no difference. The results are the same: you live.

I’m looking to make a miracle

It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.

And in the end, we were all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. ...It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they've crossed into puberty? If so, it's working.

Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life.

She didn't want to be considered a woman yet, wasn't ready to be the recipient of jewelry from men.

As for me I will follow the path of the pink bunnies.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I’ve always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside—well, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?

Is it possible that that's all maturity is? Speaking better? Is it possible that everybody in the world, is just a dumb, stupid kid acting like a grown-up because they can sound like one and look like one? It almost seems easy.

So what did it matter where she came from? Who-or what-her parents were? Everyone's family was messed up in some way including my own. And she was still the same Ariane.

Everyone's always scared for someone else's generation

There was a dazzling intellect beneath the girl's sadness, she was sure - and it bothered Mallory to no end that it might go wasted on the world if Dawn could not be coaxed out of her melancholy.

I’ve lived for nothing and might soon die for less. My Life, Part One will be cancelled midway through the first season

All of the crazy, risky, wild, dangerous, irrational things I'd been doing, like rushing through my firsts. I'd been wrong, desperate. Just waiting for the end." - Edie

My memories from this period are often nebulous. They bend and warp like clouds caught between two fronts. A lot of terrible things happened to me that I try not to remember, but I was a child, I was innocent, and I used to be happy sometimes. ”Excerpt From: Life of a Bastard Vol. 1 By Damien Black

It sounded bizarre and I was afraid of what awaited me. We entered a town called Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County. We drove up a long hill past some houses and past a sign that read “Welcome to Children’s Village.” ”Excerpts From: Life of a Bastard Vol. 1 By Damien Black

Mel eventually gave up trying to talk to him and just sat there looking at him. There was not likely to be much to look at, apart from the red, puffy eyes, runny nose and the rest of the mess that was Kyle French. Certainly not the once good-looking young student that Mel had developed a crush on.

Men cannot make good decisions about their lifelong mate when driven by the passions of youth. If Pakal is continuing to see this woman, I will immediately put this to an end." -- Sak K'uk, Queen Mother of Janaab Pakal, Ruler of Palenque.

This is the fairytale of my life, the mythology of my existence, and, as I only have one story to tell, there is only one way to tell it. You may find it a little melodramatic at moments and you may not like who I was at times. But, princes frequently start out as frogs and, perhaps, by the time I reach my end, you will understand why. And so, as we all must have a beginning, a middle and an end, I will start at the beginning. Once upon a time...

The morning after my mother’s death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did sinc

As we walked home, I knew from far away the trees would've looked nice, the grass would've looked green, and we would've looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwest love and Bible Belt morals.But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge of tears with the belts of those morals tightening around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity.

Or maybe they weren’t changing. Maybe they were just now becoming what they had always wanted to be.

Fifteen and on the brink, that’s what Mum says about me. On the brink. Like it’s the continental shelf or something. On the brink of what? I want to yell. A rich and meaningful life? Disaster?

My darlings! You can hardly expect an aged crone like me to mar such a lovely event. No, I shall remain here and knit shadows. Now go forth and shine bravely, and think of nothing but love.

And i still don't know how to make sense of the world. but maybe it's okay that it's bigger than what we can hold on to.

Oh yes, he's seen the black pupils of time's eyes. Two dark drains in a pair of dirty gas station bathroom sinks. The faucet's open and he's gurgling down the pipes, gushing toward whatever tank he's bound to swirl around in for the rest of his life. There's no telling from here if that's a realm of purification or of shit. There's only one way to find out, and that's to ride it all the way down.

The terrible price of living, ain’t it? To live through others dying?

Why are you making no more songs?' I said to him in a tone like that. 'Why are you making no more songs?' 'I have grown to be a man. Only children make songs -- children and idiots.' [William the road-mender about Merlin]

Neither of us fit in, so instead we fit together.

To live in this world, I realized, is to leave pieces of your heart in various places; and to move toward any place is to move away from another.

Do you know what dead skin looks like when they take off a cast?That was my life, all that dead skin. It was strange to feel like the Ari I used to be. Except that wasn’t totally true. The Ari I used to be didn’t exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn’t exist yet.

You go and do what you need to do, June," she says to me. "You go and find what you need. Your supper will be here, when you need it. Your supper will be warm. No matter where I am, that will be your home," she says.And I can't believe it, watching her. That look on her face. It is all the love that I didn't have growing up, making a face.

Learning to think for yourself is how you separate yourself from your parents and make the transition from being a child to being an adult, though part of maturity is being able to take opposing viewpoints into consideration.

My experience showed me an ugly side of our human nature. That if we are told it’s alright to step on someone, we will do so, in joy that we are not the one being stepped on. If we are told we can treat someone as lesser, we will do it, since it means we are more than they are.” -Norrie, Seeing Through Sampson's Eyes

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one."Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella.""Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty.""I don't like the look of them," Rose says.Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising.After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them."Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate.Then Lily shrugs an

not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.

Don’t matter none how bad it gets sometimes. You can always turn this shit around.

Sometimes we called one another by our future doctor names. We did it partly to be funny, but mostly because we liked it when people did it back to us.

It is very often the ordinary things that go unnoticed that end up making a difference. As you embark upon your high school careers, be unnoticed, but be remarkable.

Logan must survive. That is the only truth. The only goal. My sole mission.

We love each other. You love me, you do.” His eyes beseech me to believe it, to remember it, to feel it.

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star

The gods lie. They lie because it's the best they can do. We reach out for their lies and we keep on living.

All I can think about is how I wanted to share those firsts with Logan and how I never knew it was an impossibility because it had already been taken away from me.

It's not about becoming a movie star. It's about the down-in-the-dirt art of inhabiting the person you aspire to be while carrying on your shoulders the uncertain and hungry man you know you are.

Answer me one thing,” she says in a rigidly controlled voice. “Do you love Logan?”Perhaps I should lie, but in that moment, after what I’ve just witnessed, I’m incapable of expressing anything but the truth of what’s in my heart. “With all my heart,” I sob.

It feels like I’m trapped in quicksand. The more I struggle, the more I sink. So I stop struggling. I stop trying to free myself; because the more I struggle the scarier it becomes. Then—and only then did panic yield long enough for a numbness to spread and stick to me like a second skin.

She wasn't trying to overcome life, only to get along with it, to blend with the processes she could scarcely understand in a world that had permitted her no solid ground.

Veins raised themselves along the backs of my hands that summer. My handwriting changed several times. I began reading Time magazine. Soon after that it was time to go.

That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time.

It's funny, the roles we play, the way we have to give up the old ones before we have room for the new ones. The first-first love stuff never goes away in here" she said, pointing to her head. "It makes you who you are. But in here," putting her hand on her chest, "time lets that grow and change. You'll see

You were just a young girl not wanting to let on that death could happen to one who hadn't even lived yet.

Flora went to the cinema every day that week. She saw the same movie each day, and wore the same dress.

I just want to always be here. In this place. Right here, right now.

What had those vile creatures unleashed in me? What beast had they awakened? I think I vowed to kill the beast and bury it so deep in the abyss it would never again rear its ugly head. Part of me did make this promise. The other part embraced an unfolding of life’s inextinguishable flames and the mind’s unspoken bondage.As far as reinforcing the strength of my mind’s resolve, I supposed my body was a useless entity. Rather, it was this fancy thing I lived in—a mausoleum that beckoned the living,

Ryan had read half his book, listened to all his music, eaten two packets of biscuits and an apple, played seventy-two games of Donkey Kong, completing all the levels, and counted every Italian sports car they’d passed in the last hundred miles. Twenty-four hours of groggy sticky travel, twenty-four hours stuck in this overheated tin can on wheels, and he finally knew what it was like to be utterly and unendingly bored. He propped an elbow on the car window frame and stuck his arm out of the ope

Well, most of us think the “Merchant of Venice” is a porno script. On a more personal note, I’ve decided on pizza for dinner.

Sometimes I get the feeling [my parents have] asked me to hold this big invisible secret for them, like a backpack full of rocks--all these things they don't want to know about themselves. I'm supposed to wear it as I hike up this trail toward my adulthood. They're already at the summit of Full Grown Mountain. They're waiting for me to get there and cheering me on, telling me I can do it, and sometimes scolding and asking why I'm not hiking any faster or why I'm not having more fun along the way

It really is the best feeling in the world when everything that used to make you dizzy with desire becomes so wedged in your life that it changes from something you craved to something you belong in

The music is happy; the laughter is happy. Everything feels ecstatic and desperate. Blurrily, I think of sex, and I think of death. I realize: Every moment of joyous celebration contains the seed of death.

Hush now, ‘tis time to sleep and dream secrets of long ago.

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And then, when you are knocked for a six and lose your grip, they allow you to spiral into a freefall where men are broken and legends are made.

It was not about the sea or the sand, but burying her feet there had seemed to cure what had worried her...

Mom let go of us and leaned back so she could look us both in the eye. “No more spending the night in the tree fort, you two.

- ...before I was going to college, my secret plan was to one day not tell anybody and just get on some bus to some random city and just move there and become this totally different person. - Then what? - ...and not come back until I had totally become this person... I used to think about it all the time... - I don't get it... - That's because you don't uterlly loathe yourself