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Quotes About Youth

Mary Anne schedules our baby-sitting jobs.
~ Ann M. Martin
That's what happens when your parents want you to be a physicist.)
~ Ann M. Martin
I'm thirteen and five feet tall.
~ Ann M. Martin
Kristy doesn't care much about her appearance. Her brown hair is usually sort of messy, and she wears clothes only because it's against the law to go to school naked.
~ Ann M. Martin
the Bobbsey Twins
~ Ann M. Martin
Danielle sat on a desk and propped her feet on a chair. The 3rd graders immediately sat on the floor around her. The older kids followed, but more slowly. Why, I wondered, were the 4th and 5th graders so standoffish and afraid, but not the 3rd graders? Becca and Charlotte were not noted for their bravery.
~ Ann M. Martin
But when Danielle thinks of the future, she thinks of fifth grade, maybe sixth grade. She wishes to be able to graduate from Stoneybrook Elementary. When Kendra thinks of the future, she thinks of college, of being an adult, of becoming a writer. Kendra has a future. Danielle has a future, too, of course, but hers is much more uncertain.
~ Ann M. Martin
And believe it or not, you look very much the way Mimi did when she was young." "I do?" I almost began to cry again.
~ Ann M. Martin
You must be Corrie," I said to the little girl standing on our front steps. She nodded shyly. Corrie was very pretty, with brownish-blonde hair cut straight across her forehead in bangs, and straight around her shoulders below. Her eyes were framed by long, dark lashes. She was small for her age and had no color at all in her cheeks.
~ Ann M. Martin
not sure what to do about her "date." Then she simply pulled a name out of the air. "With Winston Churchill," she replied, taking the chance that Liz wouldn't know who he was. Apparently she didn't. "Yeah, he goes to high school," continued Kristy nonchalantly, getting into her story. "A sophomore. Football player … Me? I'm in seventh…. Yeah, I know.
~ Ann M. Martin
Myriah and Gabbie jumped up from the table. We know White Christmas, said Myriah. And I'll Be Home for Christmas. Claudia was surprised. They did? What about the simple songs like Jingle Bells or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? But the Perkins girls know a lot of long, grown-up songs, and sure enough they knew both of these word for word. They performed them with hand motions and everything.
~ Ann M. Martin
Two eleven-year-olds riding the subway alone?
~ Ann M. Martin
All I wanted was something normal, a day like last Tuesday when Mimi was still alive, which was less than a week ago. I wanted to walk to Stoneybrook Middle School with Mary Anne, open the side door, which we sometimes use because it's close to my locker, saunter through the halls, look for the other club members or maybe for Dorrie Wallingford or Ashley Wyeth or some other friend, and hope that a boy would notice my outfit and smile at me.
~ Ann M. Martin
I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was Kristy, sitting behind me in a seat by herself. "Stacey?" she said. "I've got a terrible problem." "What is it?" I asked, alarmed. "The theme from Gilligan's Island is running through my head and I can't get rid of it.
~ Ann M. Martin
This is beautiful," said Gabbie, looking at the tea party and trying to sound grown-up. "It is too, too diveen," added Myriah. Mary Anne giggled. She and the girls drank their tiny cups of punch and ate their cookies. Then they drank the bears' and the dolls' punch and ate some of their cookies, too. "Did you like the party?" Mary Anne asked Gabbie when it was over. Gabbie nodded. "I loved it. It was too, too diveen.
~ Ann M. Martin
Sam," said Charlie, "I've been watching you this week. I know what's going on. Have you actually told Stacey how you feel about her? Or have you just whistled at her and shot Cheerios onto her toast?
~ Ann M. Martin
Kids must coddle their excitements. Soon enough the normies have you surrounded. It's all barricades, bullhorns. Come out, come out with your wonder abated.
~ Sam Lipsyte
We are both from the same kind of towns. We both know the sound of swivel-head spray at midnight on a summer lawn. We both know the weak secrets of us.
~ Sam Lipsyte
I was used to hiding magazines inside my Bible so I'd have something to read during Father's sermons. I never would have dreamed that someday I'd be doing it the other way around.
~ Sam Torode
I'd get up early in the morning and milk the cows, Mother would prepare and bottle the milk, and I'd deliver it after football practice in the afternoons. We had ten or twelve customers, who paid ten cents a gallon. Best of all, Mother would skim the cream and make ice cream, and it's a wonder I wasn't known as Fat Sam Walton in those days from all the ice cream I ate.
~ Sam Walton
Another goal of ours was to create the kind of family togetherness Helen had grown up with. I've already told you how much the Robsons influenced Helen and me in the organization of our finances, but really I think their successful, happy, prosperous family was just an all-round inspiration for the kind of family I wanted as a young man, and, of course, it was the only kind of family Helen ever considered.
~ Sam Walton
Also while I was at Missouri, I was elected president of the Burall Bible Class—a huge class made up of students from both Missouri and Stephens College. Growing up, I had always gone to church and Sunday school every Sunday; it was an important part of my life. I don't know that I was that religious, per se, but I always felt like the church was important.
~ Sam Walton
Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first! Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer
~ Samuel Clemmons
Sometimes, and most frequently, compassion and complaint. In youth alone, unhappy mortals live; But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive: Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour come, And age
~ Samuel Johnson