Coming Of Age Quotes

Paradoxically, the more Michael kept me at a distance, the more I trusted him - perhaps because he was always willing to help me with tips and introductions even though he wanted absolutely nothing from me (and never reciprocated my nosiness with personal questions of his own with me).

~ Zack Love

And scars will lighten, they'll pale unless you keep rubbing at them...wait long enough, they'll fade.

~ C.f. Joyce

How stupid that all I have to dois grow two squishy lumps and suddenlyI'm man's best friend

~ Christine Heppermann

Goodbye. Goodbye. I can't feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.

~ Tim Tharp

A hothouse flower trained to bloom out of season and in the wrong climate. I do not belong.

~ Karen Levy

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael's middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my spine, and the fingers of my right hand were soon exploring his left hand, and we each took turns tracing the contours of the other's hands.

~ Zack Love

This is a test. This is only a test. If this was my actual life I'd be famous, rich, and thin.

~ Becky Adams

That's what it means to be a man. You do what you think is right, regardless of who it hurts, and whether it works out, because in the end you have to live with yourself.

~ Mark Goldblatt

Bittersweet: it's what life tastes like. And if you can handle the bitter, the sweet will come later. ~ Klyde, in Piranhas Like S'mores.

~ J.z. Bingham

On evenings, I spent the entire study period reading....From that time on, the world began to broaden around me, beyond any tangible limits. The world, as portrayed in those works destined for young people, was divided in two: an ordinary, everyday world, brutal and unresponding to desires, and a spacious, logical world, about all kind, interesting and desirable. Wasn't the very act of reading a pleasure more substantial than that of playing or eating, for instance, even when one was starved?

~ Joseph Zobel

As with all young ones, a deeper perception comes clearer with time... Roe'vaash recieved the grace to release the anger and pain he had carried and suffered for so long...

~ K. Farrell St. Germain

Perhaps friendship doesn't divert sound judgment.

~ J.d. Tew

It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll noticeYour face has become deranged trying to adjustTo it. Your face thought your life would lookLike your bedroom mirror when you were ten.That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.Even your parents can’t believe how much you’vechanged.

~ Robert Bly

I couldn't believe it.Something wasn't right.I thought, Batman smokes cigarettes.I couldn't believe it. Batman smokes fucking cigarettes.I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside my own heart, where even Batman couldn't help me.

~ Scott Mcclanahan

The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end. [Puberty]

~ Alberto Moravia

That night I dreamed about flying turtles and forest fires and fucking the earth...The next morning I awoke and I listened to the tree company tearing away the woods and the timber. I heard the chainsaws ripping outside my open window and I heard the dynamite exploding all the mountain tops away for the black rock below. And instead of feeling sad like I did most mornings, I felt something else now. I found myself saying, 'Explode. Explode you mountains. Rip them down you fuckers. Take this stinking dirt and leave this land with hatred and death.

~ Scott Mcclanahan

Why couldn't she have given him a sultry laugh as she'd seen women do in movies instead of giggling like some enchanted, mindless school girl?

~ Dawn M. Turner

Somewhere, a rattlesnake strike makes the dance begin. Three hawks float in the light blue sky overhead. Crows caw and the sweet seduction of lavender fills my head. And she waltzes through my thoughts.

~ Hunter S. Jones

The worst of anything she could do to me would be to make me like her. That's why I ran away.

~ Jo Walton

It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.

~ Michael Jay

In the end, every person's life is a tough act to follow.

~ James Michael Rice

It’s sad really, trying to appreciate all of the great events in our lives and all the amazingly good days. Sometimes it seems like we take them for granted, until something bad comes along to put us back into perspective. Are these bad events catalysts for change, which bring out the resiliency and best in us? A cosmic wakeup call that reminds us to enjoy the good times, because they can be taken away so easily. How messed up and ironic would that be?Is it even possible for us to remember what goodness we’re truly capable of on a daily basis, not just when things cause us to react out of necessity. A base line of beautiful acts and thoughts that are not brought out only by holiday music or someone else’s misfortune, but remain at the surface of who we really are. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Wouldn’t that be something to strive for?

~ Matthew Alan

Boys always make things more complicated.

~ Katrina Abbott

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her. I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear. She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.

~ Joe Dunthorne

You only go through High School once, but if you go through the way we did, that's enough.

~ Steven C. Smith

There exists an oasis where inspiration bursts forth like black gold from the fertile loam and every odd bellbird chirps a melody worth remembering. There’s no bloody map or nautical chart that can deliver you there, but you know the instant you’ve arrived because you never ever want to depart.

~ Adam G. Tarsitano

I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and soft to the touch. I looked back at Hairball. The moon had risen higher and Little Meadow was even brighter. The windpicked up Hairball’s singing and blew it away. By the time I got up to the house he had become a silvery ghost dancing in the moonlight, a nowhere man longing to live on the moon.

~ Scott Lax

Fuck Kerouac, he would write his own story.

~ Linda Collison

But sometimes the scars go too deep and the stories are too personal to share.

~ John Northcutt Young

I’ll be like Esther. Your daughter.”“You ain’t that strong.

~ John Northcutt Young

I just want to this about that.

~ Steven C. Smith

What in the world could this family have done to deserve a fate such as this?

~ Michael Jay

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

~ Meg Wolitzer

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

~ Raquel Cepeda

You are meant to be, despite how you got here; you’ll see someday.

~ Raquel Cepeda

It's okay to be happy.

~ Megan Duke

The butterflies have flown away, like my ignorance and youth.

~ Eileen Granfors

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

~ Raquel Cepeda

It was a sacrifice worthy of her and dreams are made to be killed.

~ David Louden

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

~ Joyce Carol Oates