Coming Of Age Novel Quotes

“All rivers carry their secrets, but not every river keeps its secret forever.”
― Bernard Jan, January River

“She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break.”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers

“This is the age," she explained to me once as we walked home from school, "when we're the purest forms of ourselves we'll ever be. We haven't been complicated by everything yet. I want to keep a clear record of who I am, so that down the road I'll be able to see who I was. Maybe I can avoid losing myself completely."

She sighed, biting her lip pensively. "Things happen," she said. "Small things and large things, and they just keep changing you, little by little, until there's no trace of who you used to be. If I get lost, this journal will be like a record of who I was, a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“It feels like I’m trapped in quicksand. The more I struggle, the more I sink. So I stop struggling. I stop trying to free myself; because the more I struggle the scarier it becomes. Then—and only then did panic yield long enough for a numbness to spread and stick to me like a second skin.”
― Jannet Casas, Perspective Change

“There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we’re not moving even our little finger to help them. It’s in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it’s a choice. So what will you choose, huh?”
― Yoleen Valai, The Rebirth of Francesca

“Bobby's back yard hadn't changed since she was knee-high. It was still littered with bicycle bits and pieces of engine that he was always tinkering with. It looked like the same relentless weeds bravely struggled through the cracked flagstones; the same array of socks and T-shirts flapped on the washing line, though somewhat bigger, and even the same wasps droned around the dustbin. That's how it seemed – a place immune to time.”
― Bernie Morris, Bobby's Girl

“Jena said, "They need to keep their relationship out of our business," and went back to work. Which bizarrely made me defensive of Aunt Lauren and Uncle P all of a sudden, as my aunt and uncle, not the director/writer-producer of the movie I'm working on, and I wanted to yell: "This is why they’re good! Because they’re so friggin passionate! And bring it all to work! Lighten up, people! Let them have their emotions! That’s what makes artists! That’s what makes GREAT artists!!!" But I didn't because I was also pissed.”
― Nicole Schubert, Saoirse Berger's Bookish Lens In La La Land

“There is no excuse when you lose. It doesn't matter to anyone if you had polio and were stuck in bed for six weeks.”
― Marc J. Straus

“Eppure realizzai per davvero quanto caotica e in prestito fosse la mia fortuna, la fortuna d’essere nato sulla guancia giusta del mondo, soltanto quando un vecchio, per strada, pianse e disse: "Sei bianco come Dio.”
― Nicolò Govoni, Uno

“I see the same sky above me, the same stars and moon, but nothing will ever be the same for me, because I love you.” Whoever said love was grand evidently had never been in love.”
― D.F. Jones, Ruby's Choice

“He had not been sleeping well over Christmas. Actually, he hadn’t been doing anything well over Christmas – eating, sleeping, exercising, talking, looking after himself, laughing, crying… No, he hadn’t really been crying despite all the pain he felt. It was just tearing him up inside, quietly. It was like his insides were being ripped up by an angered tiger.”
― Pamela Harju, The Truth about Tomorrow

“The morning after my mother’s death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did since the beginning of time. My mother’s death did not disturb the planets in their courses. And, though everything kept moving like she never existed at all, my world erupted into chaos until the universe swirled around me like a whirlpool of scattering stars.”
― James Campion Conway, The Vagabond King: A coming of age story

“A lady is a female person who has the grace to consider the feelings of others before her own, at all times, and in all places. It has nothing to do with fine clothes or posh accent, or how much money her father's got. And it don't even matter if she smokes, drinks, or never observes the finer points of unnecessary etiquette. None of these things have anything to do with it unless they conflict with the first rule. In other words, it depends who she's with. A lady is naturally born and cannot be moulded or trained to be anything else. She just is.”
― Bernie Morris, Bobby's Girl

“Oh, if necessity is the mother of invention, who is the Father? Fantasy.”
― Gregory Maguire, A Wild Winter Swan

“True love is what makes life worth living.”
― D.F. Jones, Ruby's Choice

“He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.”
― Patrick Bryant, Hum A Radiant Sickness

“Oh yes, he's seen the black pupils of time's eyes. Two dark drains in a pair of dirty gas station bathroom sinks. The faucet's open and he's gurgling down the pipes, gushing toward whatever tank he's bound to swirl around in for the rest of his life. There's no telling from here if that's a realm of purification or of shit. There's only one way to find out, and that's to ride it all the way down.”
― Patrick Bryant, Hum A Radiant Sickness

“The memories were strange clingy things like burrs knotted in his hair. He could choose to let them be, he only felt them when he pulled them, and he could pretend they weren't there like positioning his head on a pillow so as not to notice the lumps against his scalp. But amidst the commotion of the parade—a strange cocoon—he recalled things sharply. He had a part in Dam leaving the palace, and ever since that point, his best friend was headed down a dangerous path.”
― Andrew J. Peters, The Seventh Pleiade

“This is the fairytale of my life, the mythology of my existence, and, as I only have one story to tell, there is only one way to tell it. You may find it a little melodramatic at moments and you may not like who I was at times. But, princes frequently start out as frogs and, perhaps, by the time I reach my end, you will understand why. And so, as we all must have a beginning, a middle and an end, I will start at the beginning.
Once upon a time...”
― James Campion Conway, The Vagabond King: A coming of age story

“Very soon you will find yourself at the end of a dirt road, only inches from a threshold . . . a threshold into another world—a glorious world, one of infinite possibility. You’ll be standing there contemplating your next move when a gust of wind whispers, “Have faith.” When you hear those magic words, it’ll be time for you to cross the threshold and begin your journey . . .”
― Mark Ristau, A Hero Dreams

“I have to be more than a passenger this time, I have to be a rider." - Flying Change”
― G.G. Collins, Flying Change

“Before I know it, I’m already outside, riding my bike down the hill, the autumn wind biting at my face, peddling as fast as I can, foolishly hoping that if I could just break the speed of light, then … maybe I could be the first boy ever to travel back in time and maybe then … I could go back. Back to when I had a real family.”
― P.S. Greenwood, The Goodbye Bug

“As Gul predicted, later in the day, Rahmutallah Maamaa came into my chamber, by himself, and offered me a juice box, a slice of watermelon, and Budabash’s life.
I declined all three.”
― Jamil Jan Kochai, 99 Nights in Logar

“The biggest roadblock is one's self.”
― Richard W. Doornink, 1967: A Coming Of Age Story

“When the road gets rough, grab a skateboard.”
― Mike Maddock, Sunnybrook

“That girl in the mirror wasn't me. that girl in the mirror had devoured me. Swallowed me whole.”
― Leslie Tall Manning, I am Elephant, I am Butterfly

“I spent that night lying next to her in the cool of a summer breeze. I watched her drift and dream next to me, while I harnessed the weight of a thousand feelings alongside her. Her face glowed as she slept, as if she could not be any happier.
Something profound happened that night, and I did not know what it was. All I knew was that something had changed. It was in the way she gazed at me, in the way her fingers would seek out the comfort of my hands. In retrospect, maybe it was that she had fallen in love for the first time, even though she had yet to say so. But as with all things beautiful, words merely got in the way. So, I didn’t care for them. I felt it in her presence that what we shared went beyond the effable, beyond what could be written about. It was the infinite space between the unspoken I-love-yous that resounded so clearly all around us.
When the gods finally lit the stars for the night, and the moon had slipped into oblivion, I watched little rays of starlight twirl in full-bodied color on her celestial face. I wanted to stretch out my hands and caress her, to take hold of her and say, “Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.”
Like Jacob wrestling that terrible angel, I, too, wanted to grasp her—if only for a temporal second—so that I could encounter the divine.
But I dared not disturb what was sacred, so I let her sleep.”
― Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev, Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic

“Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were just normal. No gifts, no talents, no curses.”
― Jenna Marcus, My Unusual Talent

“The part of you that you repress will eat at you until it destroys you. You’ve always known that, and yet you continue to think everything will be fine. You try to convince yourself that you can fit into a world where you know you shouldn’t exist.”
― Jenna Marcus, My Unusual Talent

“Time. Time seemed like that one elusive thing that you either had too much of or simply not enough of”
― Erin Mc Luckie Moya, The Boy who was King