Lionel Trilling Quotes

I always wanted to make a coming-of-age film, or something about growing up, like 'The Wonder Years,' 'Stand By Me' or 'Diner.'

I read Jilly Cooper when I was on the verge of just growing up and I was becoming a woman.

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.

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.

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.

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

Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.

I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things, but you're old enough, too.

'Superbad' was such a personal movie.

I think when you're 14 years old, I think you're sort of looking for markers that prove you're an adult and you're independent of your parents.

I started out myself rather late you see, I was 18.

When I did a study of all the coming-of-age movies that meant a lot to me, whether it was 'The Graduate' or 'Rebel Without a Cause' or 'Dead Poet's Society,' they all had that timeless feel. None of them were completely married to the details of their age. They felt timeless in their treatment of it. That's what made them resonate with me.

I'm 26 years old. I don't need to be playing 16 anymore.

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.

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.

We forget when we're all grown up. 16 was a long time ago. It's hard to remember how freakin' difficult it is as 16! Life is not easy, and you're trying to figure stuff out.

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.

'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 grew up very fast as a young girl, but I grew slowly into my womanhood.

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

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

'Dawson's Creek' was my college experience.

'Lives' is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material - and after that, you're not sure what you can do.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.