Quotes About Youth

U sjeni stabala, Liesel je promatrala dje?aka. Kako li su se stvari promijenile: od kradljivca vo?a do davatelja kruha. Njegova plava kosa, iako je tamnila, bila je poput svije?e. ?ula je kako mu kruli u želucu - a davao je ljudima kruh. Je li to bila Njema?ka? Je li to bila nacisti?ka Njema?ka?

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.

I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.

When I was younger I used to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

I have periods now, like normal girls; I too am among the knowing, I too can sit out volleyball games and go to the nurse's for aspirin and waddle along the halls with a pad like a flattened rabbit tail wadded between my legs, sopping with liver-colored blood.

I suppose it's everyone's fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves.

Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem?

First maid: If I was a princess, with silver and gold, And loved by a hero, I'd never grow old: Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me, I'd always be beautiful, happy, and free! Chorus: Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.

Jimmy had been full of himself back then, thinks Snowman with indulgence and a little envy. He'd been unhappy too, of course. It went without saying, his unhappiness. He'd put a lot of energy into it.

She looks like a very young old person, or a very old young person; but then, she's looked that way ever since she was two.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.

What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation?

Their youngness is terrifying. How could I have put myself into the hands of such inexperience?

My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I'm older than they are, much older. I feel ancient.

He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he's fifty, and even then there's still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say.

The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time.

I could do a good imitation of a competent young woman.