Coming Of Age Quotes

She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side of the line outside of girlhood. It is a dress that says something big in a very quiet way; it is a dress that is talking to Alice right now, a dress that is making her feel possibilities never before considered, the possibility of perfume and pretty and dancing and boys. This dress is who she might be, only more so.

Laura Harrington

They drove back to her house in silence. Terrance pulled the car into the driveway and turned off the engine. Turning toward her, he said, “Khadejah, I really like you a lot and I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m not a virgin and I like to have sex. If we’re going to keep seeing each other, you’ve got to make a decision, because if I can’t get it from you I’ll get it from someone else.” He looked her straight in her tear-filled eyes. “I need to know whether to get a room for after the concert. Let me know tomorrow.” He reached over and opened her door. Khadejah didn’t say a word. She got out of the car and went into the house.Terrance sat there for a few minutes wondering if he was being fair. She had to know that he was having sex. Damn, I should feel honored that she’s still a virgin, he thought. Shit, I’ll just have my cake and eat it, too.Ten minutes later, Terrance was knocking on Adrienne’s door. “Hey, can I come in?

Tracy L. Darity

Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am scared and alone and unsure, but I am practicing. I am scared and alone and unsure, but that doesn't mean I always will be.Like AJ repeating words, I can repeat being me, until I start to believe it.

Lisa Burstein

It's okay to be happy.

Megan Duke

The butterflies have flown away, like my ignorance and youth.

Eileen Granfors

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

Raquel Cepeda

It was a sacrifice worthy of her and dreams are made to be killed.

David Louden

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

Joyce Carol Oates

If I'm going to fail, I want to fail trying.

Tiffany Hawk

He looked along the line of children, exhibits A to C of his existence and heirs to the twisted throne of his corrupt genetics.

David Louden

I was a late bloomer. I was still naïve about what 16 year olds today have known for years. I remember sitting up and taking notice—of the world, my body, others—in a way never before experienced. I noticed boys, or rather they noticed me, at 16.

Chila Woychik

So you’re the little smart ass from Poleglass.”I wanted to point out he sounded like Dr. Seuss but bit my lip and remembered the warning the old lady gave me.

David Louden

Mama and I sat on a burping bus full of chickens in cages, and round-eyed babies on round mothers' laps. (The Pinata-Maker's Daughter)

Eileen Granfors

He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.

David Louden

It's in a can. It's good forever.

Renata Suerth

I love you when you’re happy. I love you when you’re sad. I love you if you’re angry,And I love you if you’re bad. No matter how you feel, I love you all the time.Oh my sweet, dear baby, I love you all the time.

Carla J. Hanna

He begins to sing to her, very softly, almost not singing at all, just a whisper of a tune. He spins out the tune like it is a tale he is telling her, until he feels her body relax, until he feels her falling into sleep. He sings to let her know he’s there, to stay anchored to the earth, to keep from laughing or crying in amazement that he is lying with Alice in his arms, he sings as if music could keep her alive, as if music could feed her soul, as if music could weave a protective spell around her to survive these days and these weeks and these months and these years, he sings as if he could give her a piece of himself, which will ring inside of her like a bell, like a promise, like hope whenever she needs him; and in his singing, he promises her every single thing he can think of, and more.

Laura Harrington

When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.

Jake Vander-Ark

But I don't know, in the end, what deserts, chasms, achievements, virtues, and beauties have to do with love. We can love for so many different, and paradoxical, qualities in the object of our love--for strength or for weakness, for beauty or for ugliness, for gaiety or for sadness, for sweetness or for bitterness, for goodness or for wickedness, for need or for impervious independence. Then, if we wonder from what secret springs in ourselves gushes our love, our poor brain goes giddy from speculation, and we wonder what is all meaning and worth. Is it our own need that makes us lean toward and wish to succor need, or is it our strength? What way would our strength, if we had it, incline our heart? Do we give love in order to receive love, and even in the transport or endearment carry the usurer's tight-lipped and secret calculation, unacknowledged even by ourselves? Or do we give with an arrogance after all, a passion for self-definition? Or do we simply want a hand, any hand, a human object, to clutch in the dark on the blanket, and fear lies behind everything? Do we want happiness, or is it pain, pain as the index of reality, that we, in the chamber of our heart, want?Oh, if I knew the answer, perhaps then I could feel free.

Robert Penn Warren

Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.

Sharon Lee

The river moves, but it follows a path. When it tires of one journey, it rubs through some rock to forge a new way. Hard work, but that's its nature.

Kekla Magoon

I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.

Daniel Woodrell

I was the ref. I was the ref they didn’t know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win

Roddy Doyle

The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end. [Puberty]

Alberto Moravia

That night I dreamed about flying turtles and forest fires and fucking the earth...The next morning I awoke and I listened to the tree company tearing away the woods and the timber. I heard the chainsaws ripping outside my open window and I heard the dynamite exploding all the mountain tops away for the black rock below. And instead of feeling sad like I did most mornings, I felt something else now. I found myself saying, 'Explode. Explode you mountains. Rip them down you fuckers. Take this stinking dirt and leave this land with hatred and death.

Scott McClanahan

Why couldn't she have given him a sultry laugh as she'd seen women do in movies instead of giggling like some enchanted, mindless school girl?

Dawn M. Turner

Somewhere, a rattlesnake strike makes the dance begin. Three hawks float in the light blue sky overhead. Crows caw and the sweet seduction of lavender fills my head. And she waltzes through my thoughts.

Hunter S. Jones

The worst of anything she could do to me would be to make me like her. That's why I ran away.

Jo Walton

It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.

Michael Jay

In the end, every person's life is a tough act to follow.

James Michael Rice

It’s sad really, trying to appreciate all of the great events in our lives and all the amazingly good days. Sometimes it seems like we take them for granted, until something bad comes along to put us back into perspective. Are these bad events catalysts for change, which bring out the resiliency and best in us? A cosmic wakeup call that reminds us to enjoy the good times, because they can be taken away so easily. How messed up and ironic would that be?Is it even possible for us to remember what goodness we’re truly capable of on a daily basis, not just when things cause us to react out of necessity. A base line of beautiful acts and thoughts that are not brought out only by holiday music or someone else’s misfortune, but remain at the surface of who we really are. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Wouldn’t that be something to strive for?

Matthew Alan

Boys always make things more complicated.

Katrina Abbott

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her. "I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear." She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.

Joe Dunthorne

You only go through High School once, but if you go through the way we did, that's enough.

Steven C. Smith

There exists an oasis where inspiration bursts forth like black gold from the fertile loam and every odd bellbird chirps a melody worth remembering. There’s no bloody map or nautical chart that can deliver you there, but you know the instant you’ve arrived because you never ever want to depart.

Adam G. Tarsitano

I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and soft to the touch. I looked back at Hairball. The moon had risen higher and Little Meadow was even brighter. The windpicked up Hairball’s singing and blew it away. By the time I got up to the house he had become a silvery ghost dancing in the moonlight, a nowhere man longing to live on the moon.

Scott Lax

But sometimes the scars go too deep and the stories are too personal to share.

John Northcutt Young

I’ll be like Esther. Your daughter.”“You ain’t that strong.

John Northcutt Young

I just want to this about that.

Steven C. Smith

What in the world could this family have done to deserve a fate such as this?

Michael Jay

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

Meg Wolitzer

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

Raquel Cepeda

You are meant to be, despite how you got here; you’ll see someday.

Raquel Cepeda

Hush now, ‘tis time to sleep and dream secrets of long ago.

Jan Reid

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And then, when you are knocked for a six and lose your grip, they allow you to spiral into a freefall where men are broken and legends are made.

Melodie Ramone

It was not about the sea or the sand, but burying her feet there had seemed to cure what had worried her...

Alice McDermott

Mom let go of us and leaned back so she could look us both in the eye. “No more spending the night in the tree fort, you two.

Danielle Lee Zwissler

- ...before I was going to college, my secret plan was to one day not tell anybody and just get on some bus to some random city and just move there and become this totally different person. - Then what? - ...and not come back until I had totally become this person... I used to think about it all the time... - I don't get it... - That's because you don't uterlly loathe yourself

Daniel Clowes

It's bewildering to me how you can just start chatting with a complete stranger on Facebook, and - next thing you know - it seems as if there's some intense connection with the person - or at least you feel that closeness and hope it's mutual

Zack Love

Paradoxically, the more Michael kept me at a distance, the more I trusted him - perhaps because he was always willing to help me with tips and introductions even though he wanted absolutely nothing from me (and never reciprocated my nosiness with personal questions of his own with me).

Zack Love

And scars will lighten, they'll pale unless you keep rubbing at them...wait long enough, they'll fade.

C.F. Joyce

How stupid that all I have to dois grow two squishy lumps and suddenlyI'm man's best friend

Christine Heppermann

Goodbye. Goodbye. I can't feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.

Tim Tharp

A hothouse flower trained to bloom out of season and in the wrong climate. I do not belong.

Karen Levy

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael's middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my spine, and the fingers of my right hand were soon exploring his left hand, and we each took turns tracing the contours of the other's hands.

Zack Love

This is a test. This is only a test. If this was my actual life I'd be famous, rich, and thin.

Becky Adams

That's what it means to be a man. You do what you think is right, regardless of who it hurts, and whether it works out, because in the end you have to live with yourself.

Mark Goldblatt

Bittersweet: it's what life tastes like. And if you can handle the bitter, the sweet will come later. ~ Klyde, in Piranhas Like S'mores.

J.Z. Bingham

On evenings, I spent the entire study period reading....From that time on, the world began to broaden around me, beyond any tangible limits. The world, as portrayed in those works destined for young people, was divided in two: an ordinary, everyday world, brutal and unresponding to desires, and a spacious, logical world, about all kind, interesting and desirable. Wasn't the very act of reading a pleasure more substantial than that of playing or eating, for instance, even when one was starved?

Joseph Zobel

As with all young ones, a deeper perception comes clearer with time... Roe'vaash recieved the grace to release the anger and pain he had carried and suffered for so long...

K. Farrell St. Germain

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Coming Of Age Quotes

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