Teenage Years Quotes

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. ~ Virginia Satir

I was a huge horror fan, especially in my teenage years. Back then, there were a lot of Italian horror movies - some zombie, some just really strange movies that made no sense. I was really into shock and gore. ~ Chuck Hogan

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant. ~ Tim Cahill

Human life, I realized, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. You arrived, with baby feet and hands and infinite happiness, and then the happiness slowly evaporated as your feet and hands grew bigger. And then, from the teenage years onward, happiness was something you could lose your grip of, and once it started to slip, it gained mass. It was as if the knowledge that it could slip was the thing that made it more difficult to hold, no matter how big your feet and hands were. ~ Matt Haig

If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence. ~ Rachel Johnson

Often, I think that my brothers were the reason I didn't do something really stupid in my teenage years; I didn't want to disappoint them. Even though was I was pretty committed to disappointing everybody else. ~ Leigh Newman

Live your life like you are 80 years old looking back on your teenage years ~ Taylor Swift

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

I wanted a Blaine but ended up with a Duckie. ~ Ashley Edward Miller

My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It's laid out for you. It's just up to you to walk it. ~ Justin Timberlake

In the time it takes you to understand a 14-year-old, he turns 15. ~ Robert Breault

You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone ~ John Ciardi

I was an only child for 15 years and then this lovely present, Fred, came along. It was great - it meant I had my teenage years with a little one around. ~ Emilia Fox

The only thing I knew about pickups was this: growing up, I always inwardly mocked the couples I saw who drove around in them. The girl would be sitting in the middle seat right next to the boy, and the boy's right arm would be around her shoulders, and his left arm would be on the wheel. I'm not sure why, but there was something about my golf course upbringing that had always caused me to recoil at this sight. Why is she sitting in the middle seat? I'd wonder. Why is it important that they press against each other as they drive down the road? Can't they wait until they get home? I looked at it as a sign of weakness--something pitiable. They need to get a life may have even crossed my mind once or twice, as if their specific brand of public affection was somehow directly harming me. But that's what happens to people who, by virtue of the geography of their childhood, are deprived of the opportunity to ride in pickup trucks. They become really, really judgmental about otherwise benign things.
Still, every now and then, as Marlboro Man showed me the beauty of the country in his white Ford F250, I couldn't help but wonder…had he been one of those boys in high school? I knew he'd had a serious girlfriend back in his teenage years. Julie. A beautiful girl and the love of his adolescent life, in the same way Kev had been mine. And I wondered: had Julie scooched over to the middle seat when Marlboro Man picked her up every Friday night? Had he hooked his right arm around her ne ~ Ree Drummond

I was raised in New York and then moved to Miami in my teenage years, returning to New York later on. ~ Dascha Polanco

Mothers and daughters can stay very connected during teenage years. In the middle of your life, you can become very alone. Even though you're connected deeply to other family members, lovers, husbands, friends. ~ Holly Hunter

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.' ~ Helen McCrory

You know...No boy is worth your teenage years! ~ Hayley Williams

The recurring lovesickness of my teenage years often brought debilitating side effects, the worst of these being a compulsion to write Christian poetry. ~ Matthew Pierce

All my teenage years my punk was hip-hop - I just hated pop music. ~ Gustav Ejstes

When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings. ~ Aidan Chambers

We lived by the water, and I was a pretty normal kid until my teenage years; then I dyed my hair pink and spiraled out of control. ~ Tove Lo

Acting was always there, it's true. But for a long time, in my teenage years, I wasn't sure about it - not because I didn't like it, but I didn't want people to think I hadn't earned it. ~ Bill Skarsgard

These days, the teenage years are considered a time for socializing with a focus on dating and popularity. When relieved of the pressures of dating too young, I believe a young person is better able to focus on who they really are and find themselves in that crucial time when your personality is beginning to germinate. It's all that time reading, dreaming, and goofing off with fellow oddballs where our best selves get to evolve as teenagers. ~ Rainn Wilson

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Everyone has strange teenage years. It's not like I can claim some particularly unique set of high school horrors. I think I was just an awkward kid who never felt comfortable in his own skin. I think I was alone a lot by circumstance and then by choice. ~ Graham Moore

Before 'Veronica Mars,' I was not, and probably am still not, much of a crime reader. My mom left out a copy of 'Helter Skelter' when I was 10, and I secretly read it, and then I spent all my teenage years afraid of hippies. I kept away from crime books for, like, ten years. ~ Rob Thomas

Mom? Remember when Dad would call me his angel? Why do you think that was?" "Because you hadn't bloomed into your teenage years. ~ Addison Moore

It wasn't until my teenage years that a book really left a mark, and that was George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' It was on the syllabus at school when I was about 16, and I went on to read more of his books. It was the height of the Cold War, so a lot of the messages really resonated at the time. ~ John Niven

It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends. ~ Nancy Gibbs

If 'Buffy' the movie was the true love of my childhood, 'Buffy' the series quickly became the true love of my teenage years. It was everything I'd ever wanted in a show and more. 'Buffy' quickly became an obsession, and, shortly thereafter, became my gateway into an incredible, insane, indescribably wonderful new world: shared media fandom. ~ Seanan McGuire

My mum is very driven and has always kept me busy ... She used to say to me, 'Nobody likes a teenager. So use your teenage years to work. Then enjoy your life when you're slightly older.' ~ Ella Eyre

The sacrifices ordinary American men and women from communities large and small have been willing to make, often before they were past their teenage years, have secured our nation unprecedented freedoms and made us the world's bulwark of liberty. ~ Steve Buyer

I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting. ~ Sarah Dessen

I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to. ~ Spalding Gray

There was a point in my teenage years, when we were starting to play bigger shows and females were running after tour buses and all that, and my mom - and I remember this like it was yesterday - said: "Look, I want you to know that I couldn't be prouder of you. You are extraordinary. You move people. But it doesn't make you better than them. You still put your pants on the same way as them, one leg at a time every morning." I thought about learning to jump right into them, just to mess with her. But what she said stuck with me, and I think it's true. ~ Justin Timberlake

For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life anymore? Teenagers. They were the only ones who were preoccupied with existential issues, and as a result there was something puerile and immature about them, and hence it was doubly impossible for adults with their sense of propriety intact to deal with them. However, this is not so strange for we never feel more strongly and passionately about life than in our teenage years, when we step into the world for the first time, as it were, and all our feelings are new feelings. So there they are, with their big ideas on small orbits, looking this way and that for an opportunity to launch them, as the pressure builds. And who is it they light upon sooner or later but Uncle Dostoevsky. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

I was 12 when my father passed, so I didn't have a father during my teenage years. ~ Ziggy Marley

Looking back on their own teenage years, most adults feel grateful that there's no easy-to-access document of all the dumb things they did. ~ Lisa Damour

There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness. ~ Ian McEwan

One of the reasons that I think I do love to write is because I did have a difficult childhood and not so great teenage years. It always helped me escape from my problems. ~ Meg Cabot

It is strange how the romances of the teenage years retain a poignancy all through life - how a girl who turns you down when you're 16 retains an aura in your memory even long after you, and she, have ceased to be who you were then. I attended my high school reunion a couple of weeks ago and discovered, in the souvenir booklet assembled by the reunion committee, that one of the girls in my class had a crush on me all those years ago. I would have given a great deal to have had that information at the time. ~ Roger Ebert

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

It's so easy to focus on the anguish and the misery; it's harder, somehow, to acknowledge the positive, maybe for fear of jinxing it, bringing the nightmare back down on our heads. ~ Harriet Brown

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love ... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Like many authors, I caught the writing bug during my teenage years. I don't remember the exact day or year, but I remember that reading S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' sparked my interest in writing. ~ Ally Carter

Teenage years are hard. And, having taught high school for a number of years, I think they're particularly hard on teenage girls. The most self-conscious human beings on the planet are teenage girls. ~ Rob Thomas

I did throw a lot of eggs into one basket, as you do in your teenage years - 'I am buying these records, I am wearing this'. I did quite a bit of that. You have to do it, wear your stupid shoes, wear your stupid hair. ~ Dylan Moran

I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment. ~ Jennifer Egan

I want to raise my kids, I want to get them through their teenage years ... I do love my work with the UN and with PSVI so if I can do more of that and be more effective I will do whatever I can. ~ Angelina Jolie

I started my teenage years singing in churches across America, and finally wound up on a big stage. ~ Amy Grant

My mother married again after my father's death - another Royal Air Force officer, and a very different kind of man. We went to Australia when I was eight or nine. We lived there for a couple of years, and then came back and lived in North Wales for the whole of my teenage years. I learned how to write poems quite a lot. I just had a good time reading and reading and reading. So that's where I did most of my growing up. ~ Philip Pullman

I knew that I did not want to go to that juvenile diversion program because I had an intuitive sense that it would turn me irrevocably into the kind of character that I was now only rehearsing to be. ~ Gabrielle Hamilton

I think I have to laugh about the fact that I grew up in public. All these weird stages in my teenage years are documented. Why did no one tell me how terrible some of those outfits were? ~ Justin Timberlake

He was surrounded by people who loved him, yet he had never felt lonelier. ~ Thea Harrison

In my late teenage years, I developed a real passion for it, and wrote a lot of poetry. ~ Danielle Steel

It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring. ~ Henry Rollins

Humans never outgrow their need to connect with others, nor should they, but mature, truly individual people are not controlled by these needs. Becoming such a separate being takes the whole of a childhood, which in our times stretches to at least the end of the teenage years and perhaps beyond. We need to release a child from preoccupation with attachment so he can pursue the natural agenda of independent maturation. The secret to doing so is to make sure that the child does not need to work to get his needs met for contact and closeness, to find his bearings, to orient.

Children need to have their attachment needs satiated; only then can a shift of energy occur toward individuation, the process of becoming a truly individual person. Only then is the child freed to venture forward, to grow emotionally. Attachment hunger is very much like physical hunger. The need for food never goes away, just as the child's need for attachment never ends. As parents we free the child from the pursuit of physical nurturance. We assume responsibility for feeding the child as well as providing a sense of security about the provision. No matter how much food a child has at the moment, if there is no sense of confidence in the supply, getting food will continue to be the top priority.

A child is not free to proceed with his learning and his life until the food issues are taken care of, and we parents do that as a matter of course. Our duty ought to be equally transparent ~ Gabor Mate

I don't consider Los Angeles home anymore; ultimately, it was pretty negative, but I did spend my formative years in the Valley and all around L.A. proper. Through my teenage years and into my young adulthood, up until the age of 30, I spent a good amount of time there. ~ Patrick DeWitt

No boy is worth your teenage years!." "For me to be in love with someone means that I have to accept who I am, and not allow another person to define me. And if someone loves me in spite of all that, then that's a start. ~ Hayley Williams

I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy. ~ Tommy Kirk

It was the kind of summer evening that made Ursula want to be alone. 'Oh,' Izzie said, 'You're at an age when a girl is simply consumed by the sublime.' Ursula wasn't sure what she meant ('No one is ever sure what she means,' Sylvie said) but she thought she understood a little. There was a strangeness in the shimmering air, a sense of imminence that made Ursula's chest feel full, as if her heart was growing. It was a kind of high holiness - she could think of no other way of describing it. Perhaps it was the future, she thought, coming nearer all the time. ~ Kate Atkinson

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

I've always resented the force of attraction that traps me here on Planet Earth. It makes me feel like a bug stuck to a piece of duct tape. Ever since my teenage years, when I used to read a lot of science fiction and took it much too seriously, I've dreamed of somehow reaching escape velocity. I am, you might say, anti-gravity. ~ Charles Platt

I really can't be bothered going to a barber. And shaving every morning, that's nightmarish. I spent my teenage years covered in tiny little bits of toilet paper. ~ Alan Moore

In many ways, I have it easy now with the kids. They're still in elementary school; the teenage years will surely have their own challenges. I've tried to stay involved in their lives, though my participation in school events has declined because of my other commitments. I can't be the supermom who volunteers for every class trip anymore. But I do chaperone when I can, and one of my happiest days recently was watching Bubba give a class report.
It's been hard to realize and even harder to accept that that's enough.
The kid's emotional growth won't suffer if they don't have the most frightening zombie costume in their class? No? Really?
Can I get that in writing?
Things that are vital to their success in life as well as school--those things we still do. Chores, required reading, homework, of course--those are all still there.
And we still thank God every night for the things that mean a lot to us. We always say what we are grateful for that day--and from that, I've learned a lot about what's important to them, and I think they've learned the same from me.
One of the most remarkable things about children is their compassion. Mine continue to pray for others every night. Maybe it comes from the DNA. Maybe it comes from having been through adversity. But it's a wonderful quality, one that I hope stays with them as they grow. ~ Taya Kyle

Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11. ~ Michael Crichton

When I look back, it was a strange period in my life, looking at my childhood and then my teenage years and forming Slayer when I was still 17, not out of high school. ~ Dave Lombardo

I grew up in predominantly black neighborhoods and went to predominantly black schools. And hip-hop is what I grew up listening to in my teenage years. Basically I'm just being myself. ~ Mark Wahlberg

To be straight, I was kind of a dork, and in order to fulfill the creative fires burning inside me, I participated vigorously as a Civil War re-enactor through most of my teenage years, traveling across the country to participate in large scale reenactments - grandiose plays enacted by over weight history buffs and war enthusiasts alike. ~ Cary Fukunaga

In my teenage years I was as addicted to great pop as I was to free jazz, electronic music, and hardcore blues. ~ Scott Walker

Fear of Dating

Dating is a big part of the teenage years. Dances, parties, and other social events can make you long for a significant other. However, if you have social anxiety, you may be terrified of getting close to someone of the opposite sex. You may be afraid of saying something silly or acting inappropriately. Flirting, a playful way of getting noticed and letting someone know you like him or her, may seem impossible when you feel awkward and insecure. ~ Heather Moehn

I used the diabetes as my weapon. Of course, I was only hurting myself and making myself sicker, but I guess it was something I had to go through. I never went overboard so much that I really hurt myself, but my early teenage years were very tough. ~ Dana Hill

I'm 23 right now and I feel like I'm still trying to figure it out. Maybe in another two years, I'll have it all together. So maybe 25 is the age at which a woman feels her most beautiful just because she's survived her teenage years and early twenties. ~ Chanel Iman

Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories. ~ John Boyne

I, a fervent anti-Christian from early teenage years and a materialist in my heart of hearts, had in one second, without any reflection, got to my feet, walked up the aisle and knelt in front of the altar. It had been pure impulse. And, meeting those glares, I had no defence, I couldn't say I was a Christian. I looked down, slightly ashamed. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

When I started reaching teenage years, I listened to everything that was on the radio like everyone else did, which was Chuck Berry, Beach Boys and then of course The Beatles, Stones. And of course in the 60's, I was completely blown away like everyone else by Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck and all of that ... so those were my influences. ~ Ronnie Montrose

My dad liked a lot of Motown, but I didn't listen to it until my teenage years. ~ John Legend

It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then. ~ Paul McCartney

I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years. ~ Chester Brown

As your prospective of the world increases, not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules or atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large such as cloud formations, river deltas, cloud formations, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

They were young and gay and the femininity of their teenage years had only recently hardened into the muscle of a competitive sexual economy. Their muscles met the demands of the city, and the city met the demands of their muscles. ~ Christopher Bollen

People - not just in their teenage years - hold on to this fantasy of love when they're not ready to have a real relationship. ~ Keri Russell

I remember [in teenage years] thinking there were a lot of check boxes out there to sort teens into appropriate molds, and they didn't seem to make check boxes for whatever it was that I had grown up into. I definitely explore that a lot in my novels. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I had an upbringing in which I was allowed to be free and use my mind. My parents only helped me to be myself.It was only in my teenage years that I met people who made me start having doubts about who I was. They said you shouldn't be confident, you shouldn't be strong. It is only when you meet those other people that you lose confidence. ~ Juliette Lewis

You might say I was a passive atheist through my teenage years. ~ S.T. Joshi

During my teenage years as an Islamist recruiter, I moved to live in self-contained communities in the London boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets. ~ Maajid Nawaz

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today
whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.
But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind. ~ Stephen Fry

Half the time your kids end up hating you for at least 5 of their teenage years[.] And don't ever expect anything so mundane as a thank you ~ Donna Ball

The time to build your future is in your teenage years and your 20s, but equally, in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. ~ Lukasz Laniecki

In a lot of areas of my life, particularly in my teenage years, I began to think about the world, and to think about the universe as being a part of my conscious everyday life. ~ Julius Erving

We know that if we can prevent kids from trying drugs in their teenage years, we dramatically reduce the likelihood that they will go on to have problems later in life. ~ John Walters

I came from a dance background, so that's what I did my whole teenage years. I was at the dance studio a lot. It just becomes your social scene and part of your life. ~ Felicia Day

I went through my awkward teenage years. I don't want to go back. ~ Ashley Wagner

I didn't have any of those good assets to have successful teenage years. It was hard. And what saved me was definitely my whole family. I knew where I was coming from and where I was going to. ~ Celine Dion

I think I grew up a bit quickly. I wish I was younger than I am in my head. I feel like an old lady for various reasons. I have a yearning to live out my childhood and teenage years and have a bit more fun than I actually did. ~ Elena Tonra

I remember watching films in my teenage years, and you'd be in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, and then a song would come on. You'd love that song forever; it changed your life. ~ Lykke Li

Leonard Bernstein was probably the most significant formative influence on me - he was such an encompassing musician. I spent my teenage years absorbing him, and my other interests stemmed off of that. Bernstein led me to Sondheim and to Gershwin, and Sondheim led me to listening to Joni Mitchell. ~ Jason Robert Brown

As I grew older I learned to be ashamed of being poor, too. It became humiliating, something I'd do everything I could to hide from the rest of the world. I developed an overwhelming sense of being excluded from everything. Everywhere you look you see people with things that you do not have, and it has a profound mental effect. That's mostly during the teenage years. ~ Damien Echols

I DON'T KNOW! I HAVE NO FREAKIN' IDEA. I'M ONLY FIFTEEN. I want my mom. ~ Jacquelyn Nicole Davis