Quotes About Youth

Had Ken Kesey opened Electric Kool-Aid stands on every college campus in the country, it would have made a lesser contribution than Life to the creation of that era of unprecedented foment we like to call "the sixties.

Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to all young mammals but are rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans. Humanity has , when it has advanced, not because it was sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, and rebellious, and immature.

As a result, our big "attic" room was a Hispanic gathering place. Afternoons, it was crowded with boys from Venezuela and Cuba, jabbering away in Spanish, the world's fastest language, seeming to all talk at once. It was like living in a cage full of parrots whose crackers had been laced with crystal meth. I found it agreeably colorful. For whatever reason, Brugál had not

Feeling loquacious now, Switters might have gone on to offer his theory on suicide bombers, to wit: Islamic terrorist groups were successful in attracting volunteer martyrs because the young men got to strap explosives on themselves and blast valuable public property to smithereens. Exhilarating boom-boom power. If they were required to martyr themselves by being dragged behind a bus or sticking a wet finger in a light socket, volunteers would be few and far between.

She thought of the things that lovely young women usually think about when they are relaxing in treetops and unhampered by underwear.

Lancelot Delano (that was his actual name, though his friends called him "Gumboot") was a tall, gawky youth, strong as a mule but sweet as molasses and just about as slow.

Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere- the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.

Girls who kiss don't know Latin.

The Almost Free Theatre, the Fun Art Bus and the rest of them were phenomena of a decade which was simultaneously playful and desperately serious; and

Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.

Adults do not talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information.

It was a silly age, twenty-five; too old for teenaged dreaming, too young for settling down. Every corner was a possibility and a dead end.

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

All he did from freshman year through sophomore was react -- sneer, laugh, dismiss, find fault, demean -- a young man's version of critical thinking.

He fell for an eighteen-year old girl with one of those deepdown spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going.

My nature is a quiet one, anyway. As a child I was considered respectful; as a young woman I was called discreet. Later on I was thought to have the wisdom maturity brings.

Fondling their weapons, feeling suddenly so young and good they are reminded that guns are more than decoration, intimidation or comfort. They are meant.

You always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses – young loving.

Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses- young loving.

What you reckon make him do a thing like that? Beats me. Just nasty. Well, they ought to take her out of school. Ought to. She carry some of the blame. Oh, come on. She ain't but twelve or so. Yeah. But you never know. How come she didn't fight him?

She knew from personal experience how hard loving was, how selfish and how easily sundered. Withholding sex or relying on it, ignoring children or devouring them, rerouting true feelings or locking them out. Youth being the excuse for that fortune-cookie love—until it wasn't, until it became pure adult stupidity.

They did everything but slap each other, and finally they did that. What postponed the inevitable were loves forlorn and a very young girl in too tight clothes tapping on the screen door.

the girl's face was as tight and mean as broccoli

Frieda came toward us, her brown stockings straining at the knees because she had tucked the toe under to hide a hole in the foot.