Quotes About Youth

Rita Williams-Garcia

The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou and The Outsiders

I wanted to write this story for those children who witnessed and were part of necessary change. Yes. There were children.

You have to get older. Growing up is negotiable.

I liked being a teenager, but I would not go back for all the tea in China.

Learning to drive is a scary thing for a parent. I had to basically lie to get the keys when I was a kid.

I was too young to know adult life is full of accidents and interrupted moments and empty beds you climb into and don't climb out of.

I was the only kid at Camp Don Bosco who would admit he was an alter boy back home, so I served two masses a day all summer. But I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles - it was like being a glamrock roadie for God.

We couldn't believe how exciting it was to be together, a pair of young Americruisers on a roll. We'd lived for just twenty-five years; we weren't planning to die for fifty more. We danced and drank and went to rock shows. Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

When Renee and I talked about it years later, we agreed on one point: We were insane. Renee always said, "If any of our kids want to get married when they're twenty-five, we'll have to lock them in the attic." We were just kids, and everybody who came to the wedding party was guilty of shameful if not criminal negligence-- look at the shiny pretty toaster, isn't it cute to see the babies playing with it in the bathtub? Jesus, people!

A whole generation of southern girls, raised on the promise of Michael Stipe.

Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves. It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do.

When George was a kid he used to follow me and my first girlfriend, Cynthia—who became my wife—around. We'd come out of art school, and he'd be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the Dakota now.

I Saw Her Standing There' is the best first song on a debut album, ever.

The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with—nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape.

The words "douche" and "bag" have never coupled as passionately as they did in the person of my thirteen-year-old self.

We were just a couple of fallen angels, rolling the dice of our lives. We'd heard all the horror stories of early marriages and fast divorces and broken hearts. But we knew none of them would happen to us, because as Dexy's Midnight Runners sang to Eileen, we were far too young and clever.

We were young and in love and the world was changing

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

Kibbo Kift, an organisation which taught young men outdoor survival skills with a neo-pagan twist.

It is strange that people train themselves so carefully to go to waste so prematurely

From a May 1, 2004 article entitled "Still Up to Mischief" from The Guardian reporting on and quoting Altman ] Still, it's worth noting that by the age of 20 this whistle- blower had resisted two of the most powerful institutions - church and army, both. He is an atheist, 'And I have been against all of these wars ever since.

I try to remember that except for a very few psychopaths, most people on most days are doing the best they can." I take that for my working motto, though I remain haunted by the thought that if "a kid is just a kid," then a sixteen-year-old kid is a kid just two years away from voting.

Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It should be a duty of citizenship. This is how we once regarded military service.