Lenny Kravitz Quotes

All young men can relate to that moment where they have to - or, rather, attempt to - stand up to their dads with their own ideas of what they want for their own lives.

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers.

A bully is a bully, and it's important that you stand up to them.

I was very much a late bloomer. That's not to say that girls didn't express interest in me from time to time, but I just, I did not know how to respond to that.

It was the first time I traveled alone, but I was not scared.

At midlife, I think a woman has more in common with her teenage children than anybody else. We all are kind of uncertain. We realize for the first time in either our lives or decades that we're in charge now.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

My dad always used to tell me that if they challenge you to an after-school fight, tell them you won't wait-you can kick their ass right now.

My relationships with both my mother and father are good. We spent several difficult years hashing over the problems and the past, and worked out a fairly solid middle ground. I wouldn't say my relationship with either of them - they're no longer together - is exactly typical, but that would be difficult after all we went through.

I met my grandfather just before he died, and it was the first time that I had seen Dad with a relative of his. It was interesting to see my own father as a son and the body language and alteration in attitude that comes with that, and it sort of changed our relationship for the better.

You lie when you're a teenager, I think, because your parents are treating you like you're younger and you - in your mind - think that you're so much older. You make up all of these lies because you think it's what you should do.

She had a hit for every syllable: 'Don't. You. Ever. Talk. To. Me. Like. That. Ever. Again.' That was the last time I ever talked back to Mom.

For a long time I was cautious of working with my parents because I wanted to feel separate from them in the community. Now there's no more wasting time.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

You discover two things when you're a teenager. One, that your parents are not the idols that you thought they were when you were growing up, if you had nice parents. And two, that you have power over them, and you can upset them and confront them and attack them.

I don't think I gave my mom too much trouble as a teenager.

My dad being not the greatest dad in the world has made me a better parent.

It's refreshing and weird when your kids get older and they're able to tell you how they feel and what they want.

I think the father-son dynamic is interesting. I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son.

The child who would be an adult must give up any lingering childlike sense of parental power, either the magical ability to solveyour problems for you or the dreaded ability to make you turn back into a child. When you are no longer hiding from your parents, or clinging to them, and can accept them as fellow human beings, then they may do the same for you.

My mum has lived in Australia for 22 years now, and we have a rocky relationship. But at the same time it's one I want to maintain. I need her to be my mum. The relationship took a lot of rebuilding.

I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.

But it took me awhile to figure out Christine at this age, you know.

My last boyfriend used to always tell me, 'Grow up.' But I say, Why?

I like writing about teenagers because it's a time of great change and conflict. Up to then, you accept what your parents tell you.