What was he? A mere human, stuck between the rungs of blended adolescence and nascent adulthood. What power did he command over the mysterious forces of love? Which sword could shatter the impenetrable armor of desire?

— Faraaz Kazi

When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.

— Bertrand Russell

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street... it is all the same. It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death… And they should! ... For they are 'in' life.

— Roman Payne

When You Live Life Too Early, You Learn Life Too Late.

— O. S. Hickman

When you're a kid all you want to do is be somewhere else.

— John Scalzi

When you're in your twenties in a new city where no one's from here, we're all sort of orphans. The only people that you can count on our bunch of people that you work with and that you know. You're only as good as the reliability of that latticework.

— Dave Eggers

Why, I wondered, do people who at one time or another have all been young themselves, who ought therefore to know better, generalize so suavely and so mendaciously about the golden hours of youth--that period of life when every sorrow seems permanent and every setback insuperable?

— Vera Brittain

Yes, you're right. It's part of growing up, I suppose. You always have to leave something behind you.

— Neil Gaiman

Yes, you're right. It's part of growing up, I suppose. You always have to leave something behind you.ü

— Neil Gaiman

You can never really trust someone who remembers every embarrassing detail of your adolescence.

— Daniel Clowes