Coming Of Age Quotes

“The rolled toile slowly climbed up the bathroom wall. Tearing the chewed gum into pieces, the little green arms and hands secured the toile to the wall. Soon, the two-foot by five-foot, green and yellow, Tuscany toile was displayed for view. Now, the toile just had to wait for the boy to wake and step a little closer.”
― Mary K. Savarese, The Girl In The Toile Wallpaper

“You’re building your pain résumé.”
― Ayura Ayira, Good Girls Die

“Visto che siamo al mondo, stiamo tutti morendo.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“So I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age.”
― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve

“To be a black male is to be always at war, and no flight to the county can save us, because even there we are met by the assumption of violence, by the specter of who we might turn on next.”
― Ta-nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle

“Honey, tears don’t make you weak. They’re grief’s way of rain falling on embers.”
― Liana Gardner, Rain Falling on Embers

“My whole life, I’ve watched my mother let the winds of circumstance blow her south of happy, and she never sees the bright side of anything.”
― Liana Gardner, South of Happy

“It’s like blowing on embers. The past sparks to life and haunts you.”
― Liana Gardner, South of Happy

“Home. Such a small word—but meaning so much. I wasn’t headed toward home. I was getting farther and farther away with each passing mile.”
― Liana Gardner, Rain Falling on Embers

“Marx era un lettore prodigioso e Sadie gli sembrava quel genere di libro che si può leggere e rileggere molte volte, scoprendo sempre qualcosa di nuovo”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The corners of my mouth twitched. Wait. Did this boy just make me smile in the middle of the apocalypse?”
― Candice Jarrett, Mortal Tether

“The law might not recognize it, but fifteen‘s a girl and sixteen a woman, and you get no map from one land to the next. They air-drop you in, booting a bag of Kissing Potion lip gloss and off-the-shoulder blouses after you. As you‘re plummering, trying to release your parachute and grab for that bag at the same time, they holler out "your are pretty", like they‘re giving you some sort of gift, some vital key, but really, it‘s meant to distract you from yanking your cord. Girls who land broken are easy prey. If you‘re lucky enough to come down on your feet, your instincts scream to bolt straight for the trees. You drop your parachute, pluck that bag from the ground (surely it contains something you need), and run like hell, breath tight and blood pounding because boys-who-are-men are being air-droped here, too. Lord only knows what got loaded into their bags, but it does not matter because they do terrible things in packs, boys-who-are-men, things they‘d never have the hate to do alone...we were racing to survive the open-field sprint from girl to woman.”
― Jess Lourey, The Quarry Girls

“Toen hij even later omkeek, deed zij het ook. Hij stak zijn hand weifelend op. Hoe snel ze zich nu van hem verwijderde.... hoe vanzelfsprekend ze uit elkaar gingen, zonder wrijving, niet tegen te houden, alsof hij gewichtloos de ruimte in zweefde.... Hij besloot deze gedachten los te laten. Hij wilde nergens meer aan denken. Hij wilde alleen maar ervaren hoe het is om vrij te zijn.”
― Ricus van de Coevering, De hooier

“When they ask how I weathered the storm, I will tell them I did not. I was uprooted like the palm trees and shot down like the birds from the stormy skies. I was ravished like the zinc houses and devoured like the soil as it swallowed itself whole. I was ruined. I was disaster. I was dancing in the eye of God’s will.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper as we ascend into the sky.

How beautiful it was to be destroyed.”
― Asha Bromfield

“When they ask me how I weathered the storm, I will tell them I did not. I was ravished like the zinc houses and devoured like the soil as it swallowed itself whole. I was ruined. I was disaster. I was dancing in the eye of God’s will.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper as we ascend into the sky.

How beautiful it was to be destroyed.”
― Asha Ashanti Bromfield, Hurricane Summer

“Son, you’re growing into a big man. You’re going to have to be more conscious of yourself. You are not a mean kid, but because of your size you will do things that will be seen as a threat. You need to be conscious especially around white people. You are big, and you are a young black man. You need to be careful about what you do and what you say.”
― Ta-nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle

“No matter what the professional talkers tell you, I never met a black boy who wanted to fail.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle

“Think about a wheel. Make a mark on it. The mark returns to the same position with each rotation, yet somehow moves forward.

So it is, with wheels, clocks, planets, and lives.

“BULL SNORT,” Anna gruffed, “if Elvis is the work of the devil, then that ol’ Satan does DAMN fine work!”

Three roads converged in a yellow wood And I, I said, “What the hell? This isn’t how it goes.”

Fire don’t care if you believe in science and physics, or God.

Fire gonna burn.

Nothing is ever truly gone. Matter is transformed into energy and energy is conserved forever. I’m every bit as certain of this as was that Heisenberg fella

It doesn’t matter much whether your story is on the front page, so long as it’s not in the obits or the funnies.

Did you ever wonder how Alice got down that rabbit hole? She wasn’t small ‘till she ate the mushroom she found at the bottom.


Sometimes shyness is simply reluctance to be bothered by the mundane.

For some reason, Texas waitresses habitually confuse their customers with a sucrose-based condiment.”
― Bill Schweitzer

“I guess this is it. This is what now feels like.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Time...is a rocking horse. When Krishna was a child, he pulled its ear, released it, and walked away, laughing. It creaked, back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth. Noisy nonstop. We worship Krishna in the child form because we want him to come and grab that Time Horse by its tail; when he does, the horse’s grinning face will come to a halt and
silence will descend. Peace, at last, from the noise of time. Isn’t that the need at the heart of our every prayer, whatever our material demands, whatever words we choose? Peace from the noise of time.”
― Shastri Akella, The Sea Elephants

“I shall marry the man who brings me the diamond that best suits me.”
–Vienna by E. L. Schoeman”
― E.L. Schoeman, Vienna

“No one will believe you,” Augustus told Vienna, throwing at her the full fury of the dragon in his heart, “because no one but you will see them –”
And now, Vienna was terrified. “Father!”
“Stop this!” was the king’s demand.
But there was nothing to be done. The warlock set the curse. “Not just ghosts, but men, and the broken hearts of men. I curse you!”
The royal family jumped to their feet.
And the warlock disappeared.
Vienna stared, unmoving for some time, before turning toward her father.
“Don’t look at me,” the king said. “You’re the one who upset him.”
–Vienna by E. L. Schoeman”
― E.L. Schoeman, Vienna

“There's this little area outside by a creek, because I think every single place is by some kind of creek in Georgia, and apparently we're hanging out there. Will is the only guy from the other team here. It strikes me as odd, then, that we've cordoned ourselves off from each other because of these random group assignments. But we have. When I walk up, arms linked with Riya, Andrew glances at me and his face darkens.”
― Brianna R. Shrum, The Art of French Kissing

“Above the snap and pop of the fire, the wind howled, prowling around the inn, snooping at the windows and whining at the door. The candle flames quivered in the draft, melting the wax into strange shapes.”
― Mary Downing Hahn, Look for Me by Moonlight

“Behave. I beg you with every bone in my body... please f*cking behave."

"Oh, I’ll behave. I’m going to be such a good girl. So very, very good.”
― Pepper Winters, Lunamare

“The portrait is faded, and a child’s face is always hard to read. But I should think that child would grow into unlucky man, and the wisest thing he could do would be to abstain from growing into a man at all.”
“Why?”
“Look at the line of the underlip. Th-th-that is the sort of nature that feels pain as pain and wrong as wrong; and the world has no r-r-room for such people; it needs people who feel nothing but their work,”
― E L Voynich

“Why do I torture myself with memories from those years? What is it that's still not resolved, over and done with? I mean, what distances haven't I traveled since then? All young people do violence to themselves. Growing up is not child's play. I've written that sentence before. Repeated sentences are irritating. Or, are they the most important ones?”
― Linda Boström Knausgård, Lokakuun lapsi

“The tune of truth resounded in the hinterland of my mind, crooning to me that the tapestry of the past had long since been unraveled, that the threads of childhood bliss had been reassembled into quilts of angst and stress. Clinging to the past was like trying to hold on to water. But it was comforting to know that at one point in time, all of us had welcomed each day with cheers. All of us had loved life more than we craved death.”
― Phoenix Ning, Scarlet Butterfly

“I remember the bus ride from my parents' house to the academy all those years ago. When we left the safety of the dome - me for the first time - it felt like we were going into space already.”
― Mandy Gardner, Letters to Earth: The Last Diaspora Book 1

“When I got my official acceptance letter in the mail, Umma immediately pinned it to the fridge. She took down my old tests to make room. This letter deserved the entire metal canvas. It was the culmination of all my hard work, all my high school accomplishments. It was the thing I had desperately wanted so many moons ago. Now I don't even know why I'm here.”
― E.L. Shen, The Queens of New York