Park Chan-wook Quotes

Sixteen is a hard time. A lot of kids are experimenting with things.

The teenage years are ridiculously crucial and hard and, um, awkward.

High school was a complicated, confusing time for me. I wasn't confident, didn't know who I was, and was hiding from myself a lot.

[About being a teenager] Like, at first it's fine and you think you have a dark side - it's exciting - and then you realise the dark side wins every time.

Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity.

Well, the years from 10 to 20, when your body, mind and everything is like changing every five minutes, can be pretty torturing. And most of the interesting characters, I think, are somewhat tortured or torturous. I'm 20 now, so I'm only just an adult.

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.

I've always enjoyed the teen angst thing. I had a lot of teen angst as I was growing up, so I think I have a lot to say about it through characters before I have to move on.

Adolescence isn't just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.

My teenage life was a little strange.

At some point, I kind of went through this weird existential crisis in high school where I was just really depressed.

With Free, we were teenagers, and, ummm, there was a lot of raging hormones.

There's so much anxiety coming from social media with teenagers that we have to give them characters that are real and that are not always happy; and that have bad parents and not great, supportive parents; and that are not going on these journeys to save the world with a bow.

When I was a teenager, I was maybe a little bit angry.

Every teenager feels like a freak. It's part of being a teenager, part of the individuation from child to adult - those teenage years are who am I? What am I? Where am I going?

Adolescence involves our nutty-desperate-ecstatic-rash psychological efforts to come to terms with new bodies and outrageous urges.

I'm becoming the street. Who are you in love with? me? Straight against the light I cross.

I watch a lot of teen TV and read a lot of YA novels. I also talk to teens whenever I can. There are cultural differences between when I was a teen and now, but emotions - anger, angst, love - are the same.

I think a lot of young girls go through that period in their life of finding who they are, and at that point, looking good matters the most.

I'm glad I went through all the normal teenage dramas that a lot of people go through. I can really relate to 'Secret Life' because I witnessed those similar struggles.

We're all just trying to fit in and find ourselves, particularly when we're growing up.

Teenagers have a natural curiosity and are keen to clock up experiences. What they need to be wary of is that some experiences may erode their sense of self and lead to a fragmentation of morals.

I felt all the things that other teenagers felt. I was insecure in lots of ways, over-confident in others. I was very emotional. Excitable.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.