Quotes About Adolescence

We called him Quinn the Eskimo, since he'd just moved to Leechfield from the Alaskan oil fields where his daddy had worked. Blond as Jean Harlow, pimply, he was also skinny enough to crash a junior high dance. His sole source of pride was the obvious lie that his old man had invented the water bed, then tragically had his patent pinched by some California engineer.

I came back [to school] in the fall, as a full-time boarder, with a certain set to my jaw, determined to go it alone. A summer passed in thoughtful isolation, rowing on a mountain lake, diving from a pier, had made me perfectly reckless. I was going to get myself recognized at whatever price. It was in this cold, empty gambler's mood, common to politicians and adolescents, that I surveyed the convent setup. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

I was myself when young, but that wears out in a very short time.

This going around with boys makes me sick, said Tacy. I like Herbert Humphreys, said Tib. It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so. Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert, said Betsy, who liked him too. He wears cute clothes, said Tacy, blushing. Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.

How does a girl act with boys, exactly?" Tacy asked. "Oh," said Betsy airily, "you just curl your hair and use a lot of perfume and act plagued when they tease you.

Being sixteen means you have to be a genius conversational editor.

I had no idea if he had asked me because he liked me, or if his mom made him (our parents know each other), or because he lost a bet.

We kind of wanted the going-out, shopping, prom-going type, and we got this weird, creepy one, and we love it but what is it talking about, ever? Sometimes Stevie felt bad for her parents. Their idea of what constituted interesting was so limited. They were never going to have as much fun as she did.

It has been found that so called tomboy behavior in girls correlated closely with higher levels of testosterone. On the other side, low testosterone levels in males result in unassertive and 'feminine' behavior, whereas the highest levels of testosterone to which men are exposed during adolescence result in extra aggressiveness.

If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.

In my experience, any class or assembly restricted to girls was going to be in some way degrading, like the one where we'd been convened to receive the information that from now on our bodies would be producing poisons that would need to be discharged on a monthly basis, through an unspecified orifice. The restriction of the typing requirement to girls suggested some sort of connection between our festering genitals and the need to serve in a clerical-type occupation, perhaps as a punishment.

Yeah, Erik. You're about as sensitive as a toilet seat, Horatio said. Angie giggled. That's not original. I got it from Holden Caulfield. Who's he? Angie asked. A character in a book. [i]The Catcher In The Rye[/i]. (pg. 69)

I think most of humankind would agree, the hard part of high school is the people.

A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we're meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don't pertain.

That's high school for you, a bevy of people unfit for adult life encounters in any form.

It was the zero bullshit. If you ever met a middle school girl, you know what they are: volcano eruptions of bullshit. Every minute a new emergency, the best friend turned enemy. Some

In summer a young rooster's fancy turns to…how can I say this delicately? The most ham-fisted attempts at courtship I've ever had to watch. (And yes, I'm including high school.)

She said okay. Probably she thought I was growing up to be one more prick in her life, a junior-varsity Stoner. It's not that I wanted to be mean. But any time I started feeling sorry for her, something in my brain said Don't go there, it's a trap.

Biding my time till I turned sixteen and could drop out of school, with a whole life ahead for applying myself to full-time shit work.

Most kids don't give a hoot in hell for brains; they go a penny a pound, and the kid with the high I.Q. who can't play baseball or at least come in third in the local circle jerk is everybody's fifth wheel.

She saw clearly a boy and a man fighting for control of the same face.

Personality freezes us in a safe and secure pattern of being that we probably finished making up somewhere in junior high school. Most of our "permanent" personality was shaped from fear: fear of embarrassment, fear of losing face, fear of appearing uncool.

TRAVIS: I never said I like boys! GORDO: Ever beat off to Penthouse? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: Ever collect baseball cards? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: How old is Barbra Streisand? TRAVIS: 36. Three weeks ago. GORDO:What do you need—a fucking blueprint?

Sam told me as we were hanging up our coats that Bob was "baked like a fucking cake." I really had to quote that one even though it has a swear.