adolescent perspective Quotes

Parents feel like immigrants in the country of the young.

That's the feeling [of relativity] I always had about [Judy Blume] books which I re-read and re-read and re-read.

I know it's impossible for you to see your peers this way, but when you're older, you start to see them--the bad kids and the good kids and all kids--as people. They're just people, who deserve to be cared for.

When I was fifteen years old, the only distinction in music my friends and I made was [that] there's music made by people with short hair and music made by people with long hair.

I liked Dalgety Bay, but my life did not revolve around the house. I was a teenager there, and these things aren't that important at that age.

What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets." (...) "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the parent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.

By puberty I learned that nothing worth having could be easily attained and to succeed one must be single minded.

It's just that I'm fifteen, and I have this crazy idea I might actually have a life in front of me. I don't see how it's going to do me much good to believe that the world is over and this is just an epilogue.

I spent my teenage years in Paris when my dad was stationed there, and I'd look at women in their forties and think, 'That's the age I want to be.'

With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?

And they just slam the door. And they don't peek into that land any more. And they forget that teens and tweens are people, absolutely just as much as adults are. And their problems may play out on a smaller scale, but the things they go through are equally as valid as a CEO trying to figure out how to deal with a crisis at work. I just write for teens because I love 'em.

You’ve never been a teenager, sweetie. You know what’s best for you.

My protagonists are my mother's voice and the mind I had when I was thirteen.

I never thought I'd be 52 years old. I don't think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.

Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.

Adolescents believe that the world belongs to the living, or more particularly to living people their age, so they feel within their rights if they destroy the canon or rewrite the fairy stories or act like Red Guards.

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

You have to excuse me because I AM a teenager, so I'm allowed to sound illiterate and make stupid comments like 'I'm not into hard-core feminism.'

I know hate is a strong word and everything, but its okay: we're teenagers.

One of the dangers of making a movie about young people is it's potentially trite.