Coming Of Age Quotes

“I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.”
― Tanith Lee, The Silver Metal Lover

“The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn't, you died- or stopped growing - which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best.

-Deuce, (183)”
― Ann Aguirre, Outpost

“94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney "D" still looked like a backwards "G." Words like "Columbine," "Al Qaeda" and "Y2K" were not synonymous with "terror," and 9-1-1 was an emergency number instead of a date. At twelve years old, summer still mattered. Monarch caterpillars still crawled beneath every milkweed leaf. Dandelions (or "wishes" as Mara called them) were flowers instead of pests. And divorce was still considered a tragedy. Before Mara, carnivals didn't make me sick.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“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, Pretty Amy

“This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)”
― Kellie Elmore

“Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he’d probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick’s of Hollywood glory.”
― Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility

“When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“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, Alice Bliss

“Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“…girls were like poems: weird, incomprehensible and boring, but those “in the know” assured me that they were beautiful.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and darling brown eyes that marbled in luscious contrast with her magnolia skin; cream, melting to peach, melting to pink. She beamed like a cherub without the baby fat; a tender neck; pristine lips that would never part for a dirty word. Her body--of no interest to me at the time--was wrapped from neck to toes with home-made footie pajamas, the kind they make for toddlers, but I didn’t laugh; the girl filled that silly one-piece ensemble as if it were couture.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore.
And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.”
― Jake Vander Ark, The Accidental Siren

“And then I know I'm being a man, not just some kid who's upset and wants it his way.”
― Angela Johnson, The First Part Last

“Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.”
― Sharon Lee, Necessity's Child

“I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Woe to Live On

“It’s not easy to be God.”
― Péter Zilahy, The Last Window-Giraffe: A Picture Dictionary for the over Fives

“Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.”
― Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English

“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, Alice Bliss

“There comes a time in everyone’s life—and I do mean in everyone’s life—when you ask yourself what it is that you’ve been doing with your life. Sometimes you even realize that whatever you’ve been doing all your life, you’ve been doing it wrong. Dead wrong… Son, you want that realization to hit you when you’re 70? Or 50? Or when you’re still young, with your whole life still ahead of you?”
― Ali Sheikh, Closure of the Helpdesk — A Geek Tragedy

“Why can't a girl just want to know stuff and not do stuff?”
― Ellen Mulholland, This Girl Climbs Trees