He's taking the change well?" She asked. Except for getting a bit overtired. He's excited, but what 15-year-old wouldn't be under these circumstances?

— Frank Herbert

How do you teach a classroom of Sybil's who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you?

— David Brooks

I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Parents, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the surreal sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera. Man is a child wandering lost—to cite Baudelaire's poem again—in the "forests of symbols."(The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.)

— Milan Kundera

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.

— Theodore Roosevelt

I couldn't understand how boldness and sorrow, how you're so hard and do you really care for me? Could be so thoroughly bound together. Nor could I begin to fathom how someone so seemingly vulnerable, hesitant, and eager to confide so many uncertainties about herself could, with one and the same gesture, reach into my pants with unabashed recklessness and hold on to my cock and squeeze it.

— André Aciman

I DON’T KNOW! I HAVE NO FREAKIN’ IDEA. Furthermore, I’M ONLY FIFTEEN. Furthermore, I want my mom.

— Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.

— Eric Hoffer

If, as PJ O'Rourke ones quipped, giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys, giving actual money and power to teenage boys (and girls) is as predictably disastrous as you would imagine.

— Mark Hemingway

I feel strange... I really don't know what I am. In mind, I'm almost a woman, in body a young woman. I am almost a woman, but what am I now? I'm no child. Furthermore, I am mature. Furthermore, I know much; I'm somewhere in between. Furthermore, I'm confused--that's what I am. One day I'll long for a baby in my arms or a man's strong arms to hold me...the next, for freedom, respect.

— Maya Morrow

If we understand the signals they are giving us, middle school kids can be fun and adventurous. If we can find it in our hearts to overlook some of their quirky and mysterious behaviors, we can find them to be energetic and curious about how the world works around them. If we see the world as they view it, we can take their hand and guide them across the narrow bridges and frightening valleys they see sprawling before them. And finally, if we can reveal the patience to talk with them about the issues that confuse and bedevil them, we can find a world open for discussion and journey.

— Dr. Kid Brain