Quotes About Adolescence

Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium.

What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets." (...) "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

One year later, I grew out of my clothes because, it turns out, growing fourteen inches in a summer is easy. It's growing out of a label that's hard.

When it's my turn, I introduce myself as Josh Raymond, seventeen, no previous experience beyond my recent halfhearted experiment with sleeping pills. "The Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect is life," I add, even though no one knows what this means

A girl's life is the worst life in the world. A girl's life is: you are born, you bleed, you burn.

Every book I read and every movies I watched seems to give out the same message: high school is the worst experience you can ever have.

He's carrying around things that I can never know about, just like I am, just like we all are. I'm not sure what these things of his are, but I can guess. Dusty's sensitive, he's honest. He's a little eccentric. He's almost certainly gay, but I doubt even he knows it. Like Libby, he's not going to pretend to be someone he's not, and he's not afraid to be different. But other kids won't always like that.

The first thing I learned from Judy Blume was that God is the wrong one to ask for bigger breasts. (Stephanie Lessing)

In the United States teen rebellion is considered standard, putting the American adolescent in the awkward position of having to rebel in order to conform to societal expectations. For an obedient rule-following teen like I was, this is utterly flummoxing.

The Friday afternoon of a teenager--had anything more wonderful existed?

I'm very jealous of my daughter's education. She's been inspired by her teachers, and nobody inspired me as a teenager.

The thing was, Jeremiah was right. I did love him. I knew the exact moment it became real too. Conrad got up early to make a special belated Father's Day breakfast, only Mr. Fisher hadn't been able to come down the night before. He wasn't there the next morning the way he was supposed to be. Conrad cooked anyway, and he was thirteen and a terrible cook, but we all ate it. Watching him serving rubbery eggs and pretending not to be sad, I thought to myself, I will love this boy forever.

Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old.

I give him a strange look. Just a second ago he was grousing, and now he's happy as a clam. I don't get boys.

I turn on my side and close my eyes. What must it be like, to have a boy like you so much he cries for you? And not just any boy. Josh. Our Josh. To answer her question: yes, I think I have been in real love. Just once, though. With Josh. Our Josh.

There is something about walking into a room full of boys that makes you feel exposed, inadequate, like you come up short in every way that matters. It didn't used to be like this, and I don't know when it changed, but now it feels like it was always this way.

In the whole history of my letters, of my liking boys, not once has a boy liked me back at the same time as I liked him. It was always me alone, longing after a boy, and that was fine, that was safe

The first boy I ever slow danced with. Ever cried over. Ever loved.

Before he goes to the boys' side and I go to the girls' side, I kiss him one more time and I feel like I'm flying.

Wistfully, she says, "I wish I'd been in love more than once. I think you should fall in love at least twice in high school." Then she lets out a little sigh and falls asleep. Margot falls asleep like that ---- one dream sigh and she's off to never-never land, just like that.

He says it with all the certainty only a teenage boy can have

Why do you think I kissed you that day at McClaren's house back in seventh grade? It's why I went along with this thing in the first place. I've always thought you were cute." My face feels hot. "In a quirky way." Peter grins his perfect grin. "So? I guess I must like quirky, then.

Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.

Margot is a good girl, and I guess Kitty and I have followed her lead. I've never cheated or gotten drunk or smoked a cigarette or even had a boyfriend.