Quotes About Youth

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.

Youth is a wonderful thing," said Mr. Harrigan. "What a shame it's wasted on children.

The road, and the mysteries that lie along it, calls out to none as it calls to the young.

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists. S.K.

As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.

He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.

The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.

Dreams age faster than dreamers.

A kid of your age—any kid—could get hold of matches if she wanted to, burn up the house or whatever. But not many do. Why would they want to?

OH SHIT! I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS! he shouted, and it was true: even at eleven he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of the time.

it's the stories of our childhood that make the deepest impressions and last the longest.

A little arrogance (or even a lot) isn't such a bad thing, although your mother undoubtedly told you different. Mine did. Pride goeth before a fall, Stephen, she said... and then I found out - right around the age that is 19 x 2 - that eventually you fall down, anyway.

When we grow up, concepts gradually get easier and we leave the images to the poets

But I'm going, because all I've ever gotten and all I have now is somehow due to what we did then, and you pay for what you get in this world. Maybe that's why God made us kids first and built us close to the ground, because He knows you got to fall down a lot and bleed a lot before you learn that one simple lesson. You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for . . . and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you.

When you're still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Chris: I'm never gonna get out of this town am I, Gordie? Gordie: You can do anything you want, man. Chris: Yeah, sure. Give me some skin. Gordie: I'll see ya. Chris: Not if I see you first.

The Writer: [voiceover] I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959-a long time ago, but only if you measure in terms of years. I was living in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock. There were only twelve hundred and eighty-one people. But to me, it was the whole world.

In the fifties... when they had their summer parties - there were always different colored lanterns on the lawn... and I get the funniest chill. In the end the bright colors always go out of life, have you noticed that? In the end, things always look gray, like a dress that's been washed too many times.

Age looked at youth, and youth's applause first weakened, then died.

No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that's not right. I don't think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my heart.

You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It's only kids in high school who are convinced they're never going to change. There's always going to be a pep rally and there's always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future.

Here I am, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.

He is too young to have learned to hate himself yet, but that seed is already there; given time, it will grow, and bear bitter fruit.

Who can remember the pangs and sweetness of those early years? We remember our first real love no more clearly than the illusions that caused us to rave during a high fever.