Quotes About Youth

In high school, I had fun in my academic clubs, watching movies with my girlfriends, learning Latin, having long, protracted, unrequited crushes on older guys who didn't know me, and yes, hanging out with my family. I liked hanging out with my family! Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it.

Bribes and boy bands. That's all you need to be a babysitter.

It's sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I'll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it.

Be like Allan Pearl. Sit next to the class clown and study him. Then grow up, take everything you learned, and get paid to be a real-life clown, unlike whatever unexciting thing the actual high school class clown is doing now.

Thank you, Teach for America! Luring away America's finest minds so that the rest of us can snatch up their jobs.)

I liked hanging out with my family! Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it. So, yeah, it all added up to a happy, memorable time. Even though I was never a star.

As it is, I guess I find "Jack & Diane" a little disgusting. As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not home doing their homework? Why aren't they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn't that loitering?

With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel, circling around puzzled Jewish families walking back to their cars. This is how I learned to ride a bike.

As a kid, I was curious but not remotely adventurous, if that makes sense.

With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel,

I enter the party with my heart racing, scrambling to find the nearest bar, and ultimately wind up talking for hours to the teenage daughters of the host, who love The Office. After answering all the girls' questions about John Krasinski, I say I need to use the restroom, secretly exit through the back, and sprint to my car, never to be heard from again.

I especially like eavesdropping on women my age. Besides being titillating, it also helps me gauge where I'm at in comparison.

Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life.

I spent a great deal of my youth fantasizing about entertaining. In my early twenties I would spend hours poring over cookbooks at the Seventh Avenue Barnes & Noble in Park Slope, planning elaborate parties that I would throw when I was older and had money. Now I am older and have money, but I almost never entertain. I have yet to throw my Great Gatsby–themed Super Bowl viewing party, but when I do, it will be a big hit, as will be my Daisy Buchanan slow-cooker chicken enchiladas.

I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fine to be quiet, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents, you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up.

Remember, this was back in the '90s, before the only way to be a cool teenager was to have a baby or a reality show (or both).

There was no whimsical 'sip of wine at Thanksgiving' for us kids while we were still teenagers. This was the Clinton era, and my parents were already worried about the moral deterioration of the country.

What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair.

almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair. I

May we keep a little of the fuel of youth to warm our body in old age.

I was equally in love with singing and acting from an early age.

La estampa del viajero en motocicleta es siempre la de un jinete de paso con la que los críos sueñan.

It's important to remember that even the biggest person was, at one time, very, very small.

I was young, still so young, that I thought my lack of wholeness was somehow my fault. I had no idea everyone feels this way—that the most essential part of growing up is figuring out where your empty places are and learning how to fill them by, and for, yourself.