Coming Of Age Quotes

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

~ Eilis O'neal

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?

~ Kathryn Lomer

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.

~ Paul Russell

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.

~ Ava Dellaira

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.

~ Patrick Bryant

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

~ J.d. Jordan

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]

~ John Steinbeck

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

~ Julia Day

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.

~ Frederic S. Durbin

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.

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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.

~ Belle Blackburn

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

~ Pamela Schloesser Canepa

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

~ Hilary Thayer Hamann

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.

~ J.d. Jordan

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

~ J.d. Jordan

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.

~ David Z. Hirsch

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.

~ Michele Weber Hurwitz

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

~ Siobhan Davis

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

~ Siobhan Davis

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 exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved.

~ Rose Fall

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

~ Kaori Ozaki

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.

~ Siobhan Davis

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.

~ Cheryl Strayed

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.

~ Siobhan Davis

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.

~ Jannet Casas

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.

~ Lorene Cary

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

~ Katherine Sloan

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

~ Angela Sloan

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

~ Xingyue Sarah He

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, promising gratification, refuge, solace, peace, even immortality. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t mine. I realized then, it had never belonged to me. I could control what happened to it only if people were merciful. Watching Valentin was not merciful. It was a torturous joy.

~ Kyrian Lyndon

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 opening. Combing his hand through the slipstream, he let the cool air tickle his fingers as he watched the countryside stream past.

~ Peter Bunzl

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.

~ Jaye Frances

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. I know I'm not supposed to talk about this backpack full of their crazy, but sometimes I really wish we could all stop for a second. Maybe they could walk down the trail from the top and meet me. We could unzip that backpack, pull out all of those rocks, and leave the ones we no longer need by the side of the trail. It'd make the walk a lot easier. Maybe then my shoulders wouldn't get so tense when Dad lectures me about money or Mom starts a new diet she saw on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store.

~ Aaron Hartzler

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

~ Alexis Bass

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.

~ Laura Rose Wagner

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

~ Jan Reid

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.

~ Melodie Ramone

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.

~ Danielle Lee Zwissler

- ...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

~ Daniel Clowes

It's bewildering to me how you can just start chatting with a complete stranger on Facebook, and - next thing you know - it seems as if there's some intense connection with the person - or at least you feel that closeness and hope it's mutual

~ Zack Love