Coming Of Age Quotes

To be honest, I’ve always made films and I never really stopped, starting with little stop-motion experiments using my dad’s Super 8 camera. In my mind, it’s all one big continuum of filmmaking and I’ve never changed.

~ Christopher J. Nolan

What a wonderful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it.

~ David Levithan

Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that’s why so many adults read YA: we’re never done coming of age.

~ Betsy Cornwell

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)

~ Kellie Elmore

Kipster is a perfectly valid word,” Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. “Okay, so what does it mean?” Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it… it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her.“Well Sarah’s on drugs again and that’s why she did it in Mario’s backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid’s been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there’s a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won’t go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and….”Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she’d learned it from Jud’s death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true.

~ Thomas Wolfe

Each time that I have felt like I might finally be figuring some things out, life has decided to change the rules and I’ve had to start all over again.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

You haunt my days and dreams.

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

The most important thing is to be whatever you are without shame.

~ Rod Steiger

When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, “When did you start feeling like a grownup?” His response: “Never.

~ Shannon Celebi

It’s always better to accomplish something than nothing, but coming of age is about more than learning who you are inside: it’s as much about who you are in relation to others – and who you want to be

~ Alexia Casale

Hope, in anything but myself, is just way too dangerous right now…

~ Jennifer Elisabeth

Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he’d probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick’s of Hollywood glory.

~ Katja Millay

He had not been sleeping well over Christmas. Actually, he hadn’t been doing anything well over Christmas – eating, sleeping, exercising, talking, looking after himself, laughing, crying… No, he hadn’t really been crying despite all the pain he felt. It was just tearing him up inside, quietly. It was like his insides were being ripped up by an angered tiger.

~ Pamela Harju

I may have smiled to myself as I watched the familiar pattern of the town pass, the bus cruising through shade to sunshine. I'd grown up in this place, had the knowledge of it so deep in me that I didn't even know most street names, navigating instead by landmarks, visual or memorial. The corner where my mother had twisted her ankle in a mauve pantsuit. The copse of trees that always looked vaguely attended by evil. The drugstore with its torn awning. Through the window of that unfamiliar bus, the burr of old carpet under my legs, my hometown seemed scrubbed clean of my presence. It was easy to leave it behind.

~ Emma Cline

And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.

~ J.d. Jordan

Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.

~ J.d. Jordan

I was always on guard and I was always prepared for him to be upset with me. I had lived feeling uneasy and tense for so long.

~ Brenda Perlin

Being married definitely took work. When we fought, I felt like I wanted to float away and drown, whereas before I knew I could walk away without any strings attached.

~ Brenda Perlin

First of all, he was not my type. He was nice, considerate, unselfish and grounded; qualities I’d never experienced in a man. Usually, I went for the self centered, screwed up, “I’m lost, will you be my mother” type.

~ Brenda Perlin

I had no intention of forsaking my wedding vows. I had strong morals and never could have imagined going against them. I was never even tempted to stray.

~ Brenda Perlin

I didn’t want to get burned. I didn't want to be the other woman, but I wanted him with all my might.

~ Brenda Perlin

He wanted revenge and I knew he would not stop until he got it. I had to hope he would run out of fuel.

~ Brenda Perlin

Not long after my mom died, my dad pretty much kicked me out of the house. He never said, “Get out of my house,” but instead, I came home one night to find all my clothes scattered all over our front lawn.

~ Brenda Perlin

I had just turned thirty. That was enough in itself to be depressed about. I never thought I would be this age and feel this worthless. I was supposed to be “somebody.” I guess you could say I was slightly disappointed at the outcome.

~ Brenda Perlin

At times, it felt so odd being with a man in such an intimate way who was not my husband.

~ Brenda Perlin

This very easy divorce had become very difficult. I thought I was in the express lane and it was all fast tracks from there. Think again.

~ Brenda Perlin

I had to get used to it because my life was no longer safe and I was no longer protected like I once was.

~ Brenda Perlin

Living with myself wasn’t all that easy. I was not the young girl I once was. Once upon a time when I looked in the mirror, I saw this happy glow. Now nothing glowed except the leftover face cream from the night before.

~ Brenda Perlin

I was physically attacked by a woman who didn’t even know me. Yes, my boyfriend was her former husband, but she tried to ruin me.

~ Brenda Perlin

I could only defend myself so much. It was my word against his. There was no evidence, nor was there any proof. My word meant very little.

~ Brenda Perlin

He would say things like, “But you are my wife!” when I didn’t do something that he wanted me to do. His expectations were not realistic.

~ Brenda Perlin

Somehow, we both got carried away. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but before long, I knew nothing was ever going to be the same.

~ Brenda Perlin

Even though their marriage had been dead for over two years (her words, not mine), this put her in the role of the innocent. She was now a woman scorned. ~Shattered Reality

~ Brenda Perlin

I don’t know if this happens in all relationships, but I just got so sick of his all too familiar stories. I had heard these stories so many times that I could have recited them myself.

~ Brenda Perlin

I've come to realize that love is tragic, somewhere down the line it's inevitable. Fight for it.

~ Ann Marie Frohoff

At least I rescued your poor hot dog.

~ R.l. Stine

It seemed everyone knew their place in it, but I was in the mood where I would rather be alone and look a houseplants.

~ Ava Dellaira

Why is it so hard? It's hard because it matters, I think.

~ Mina Holmes

We're about to hit that age when we'll be too exhausted to maintain friendships, and the days of hanging out will be long behind us.

~ Gume Laurel Iii