Joss Whedon Quotes

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.

The coming-of-age story has sort of become a joke. It's something to capitalize on, and that is painful because when you are coming of age - when you are going through something like that - the genre is so meaningful.

Although I sometimes enjoy writing from an adult's perspective, I feel dedicated to the coming of age story - that part of a young person's life where he must make a decision that will change his life forever. I still remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

The characters in the book grow up with us. My voice has broken as well.

There aren't a lot of films about adolescents or quote-unquote coming-of-age films that are realistic nowadays.

My character in 'Mr. Holland's Opus' was kind of coming of age, learning about a world that was opening up to her.

For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.

When I did 'Fast Times,' I felt very close emotionally to the characters. I liked those characters because they all had to work, so they were dealing with adult problems even though they were very immature, and I could relate to that.

Many of the things that I have written on have focused, at least a big part of the story, on adolescents. I think that in that period of life, so much happens, and it's the period of life where you're forming into an adult. In certain ways, you're already an adult and in certain ways you're still a kid.

I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

A flapper is just a little girl trying to grow up - in the process of growing up.

Kids don't shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.

I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.

No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.

I really like coming-of-age dramas. It's probably the most intense period in anyone's life, those years before you become an adult. Dramatically, there's so much to explore there. And it's nice to be around young talent coming through.

I've been very surprised by people asking me what my teenage experience was like.

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

'Catcher in the Rye' changed my life when I was a kid. I read it as I was a boy turning into a man, and I was so fascinated by the values. I believe in it.

I think there is a point in every teenager's life where they are forced to come into themselves.

It's interesting because, even with 'Beetlejuice,' I was an awkward kid. I started at puberty and went through it on film. Lydia was one of my favorite roles because I related to her a lot.

In young adult novels and children's books, you stay in moment. The story goes through a school year or a weekend. You never get a sense of a future self because the young person has not lived that yet.

Peter Parker's storyline hits every key point of growing up.

The things a young woman goes through between the ages of 18 and 20 are far different than what a young woman can go through between 20 and 22.