Best 660 quotes in «coming of age quotes» category

Be the time he finds his way out of the chamber and the planetarium, he has become me.

Be willing to turn your attention to that which serves you.

Be yourself, and do what you think is right, or all the rest of it doesn’t mean much.", Loving Summer by Kailin Gow

Bill suited the action to the word, getting up and leaning over the handlebars and pumping the pedals at a lunatic rate. Looking at Bill's back, which was amazingly broad for a boy of eleven-going-on-twelve, watching it work under the duffel coat, the shoulders slanting first one way and then the other as he shifted his weight from one pedal to the other, Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable...they would live forever and ever.

Bittersweet: it's what life tastes like. And if you can handle the bitter, the sweet will come later. ~ Klyde, in Piranhas Like S'mores.

Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.

Boys always make things more complicated.

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up.

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

But I don't know, in the end, what deserts, chasms, achievements, virtues, and beauties have to do with love. We can love for so many different, and paradoxical, qualities in the object of our love--for strength or for weakness, for beauty or for ugliness, for gaiety or for sadness, for sweetness or for bitterness, for goodness or for wickedness, for need or for impervious independence. Then, if we wonder from what secret springs in ourselves gushes our love, our poor brain goes giddy from speculation, and we wonder what is all meaning and worth. Is it our own need that makes us lean toward and wish to succor need, or is it our strength? What way would our strength, if we had it, incline our heart? Do we give love in order to receive love, and even in the transport or endearment carry the usurer's tight-lipped and secret calculation, unacknowledged even by ourselves? Or do we give with an arrogance after all, a passion for self-definition? Or do we simply want a hand, any hand, a human object, to clutch in the dark on the blanket, and fear lies behind everything? Do we want happiness, or is it pain, pain as the index of reality, that we, in the chamber of our heart, want? Oh, if I knew the answer, perhaps then I could feel free.

But I love you and I want you and I need you. Can’t you see that? This world has nothing to offer me if it doesn’t include you.

But it wasn't anyone! ... What could I say I was a freak - an Empty.

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And then, when you are knocked for a six and lose your grip, they allow you to spiral into a freefall where men are broken and legends are made.

But sometimes the scars go too deep and the stories are too personal to share.

But sometimes you have to make a decision with your heart instead of your head, and that’s what I did. I know I’ve made the right decision even if it takes my brain a little while to catch up to my heart.

But what if, after one small change, her life would become much worse than it was? Or unthinkable disasters result from a single step off her path?

But wasn’t time for what was. Was time to settle up the future.

But when she looked at Prue tonight, she saw this was not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just descending.

But what if Oscar—” “Breathes fire and threatens to cook you over a grill?” “I was thinking what if he gets mad, but I think your way works as well.” “Then you shall make for a tasty meal.

Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that’s why so many adults read YA: we’re never done coming of age.

Can’t count on no miracles. Sometimes, you just got to have a plan.

Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.

College isn't half as much fun as they told us it was going to be." "It's not one-hundredth as much fun.

Christianity is supposed to be all about love but it’s utterly useless when you’re in love.

Close your eyes, what do you think about? Not all dreams happen with your eyes closed, but the ones that do are the ones that have the most imagery, the most hope. Hope can be a dreadful thing but it can be a beautiful thing. There have been many great philosophers who have said that hope and dreams have this false sense of themselves, that they are only fragments of the real or true. They may be right about being fragments, but that does not make them any less true. Dreams send us guiding towards ideas, that are true themselves, if only ideals, of goals that we should strive towards. It is cliche and commonplace to call dreams fantasies of the mind, wishful thinking of fading things. Yet there are things that philosophers cannot explain, that reason leaves, all philosophers believe themselves poets but leave the soul out of their writing. The mind and its reason, that is truth. That is the belief. Yet anyone who has looked at a view that has left them without breath has known of something more.

Coming-of-age tales and villain origins have a lot in common. Teens are fighting for their independence and against familial pressures. Villains are frequently fighting against societal and moral expectations in their origins.

Could you maybe not stare at my brothers in open mouthed admiration?” Rachel whispers. “It will only make their egos bigger.”, Loving Summer by Kailin Gow

Cormag caught his hand and pulled him back until they were facing each other. “I think you're amazing,” he said, blurting the words out. Lachlan smiled, completely shocked and thrilled by how captivating he found him. He had never thought this could happen to him, that he would be attracted to another boy. He thought he knew himself so well. “I think you're smart, sexy, funny as hell. You have hidden depths, Lachlan. You only need the right person to coax you out of your protective shell,” he claimed. “Are you the right person?” Lachlan wondered, as he took a half step forward. Cormag took a deep breath and brushed at a strand of hair that was sticking out at a funny angle from behind the top of his ear. He tugged at his short hair every time he talked about his recent break up. He was such a dork.

Despite its ferocious name, or perhaps because of it, it was the head of the pack of six bars in town. The sweet smell of cider and dank cigarette smoke wafted up her nostrils. Better than Lucy’s sweaty armpits at Emberswick Bar & Grill.

Creativity is the catalyst to the future.

Cry your guts out because nothing is sadder than an adult who forgets how to be a child.

Death can’t be cheated, but there are endless ways that life can be lived.

Dear God, please help me to be the kind of person who my dogs think I am.

Delores was hot! She was a very attractive woman in her mid-thirties, which at my age I considered to be an older woman. She lived in Dumont, New Jersey, and my mother suggested that I visit her and confirm the arrangements she had made with her brother. That Saturday I caught a Public Service bus from Journal Square to Dumont. It didn’t take long to get there and before I knew it, I was at her door. Delores was a divorcee and I enjoyed the feeling that she liked me. She didn’t do anything inappropriate, but I felt that she would have if she could have! Knowing that she was a coworker and friend of my mother, her very close presence seemed awkward. Sitting on her living room couch so close to her was exciting, so I didn’t move away. I was amazed at her television set and was torn between looking at her cleavage and looking at this new contraption that could receive moving pictures through the air.

Did you ... touch me right after you called me brat?" He shakes his head. "Why not?" I ask. "You were too intoxicated to give your consent." "And?" He frowns. "If, while you were drugged, I had touched you like I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to call myself a real man.

Do I look like I want to be involved in your teen love saga? Ask someone who cares.

Don't make me sit through reality.

Don’t matter none how bad it gets sometimes. You can always turn this shit around.

Don't keep coloring in their lines waiting for them to sign on the dotted... for you will become... ...overdrawn.

Don't read their rubbish... Read mine ☺️

Don't think twice; once is enough. If you have to think again, it will always be a second thought.

Don't think about that. Just believe I'll be okay.

Do you ever wear leather?" the guy asks. "What?" "Leather. Do you like leather?" "It doesn't exactly wipe me out." "I like to see boys in leather." I look at him cool. "Okay," I say, "what is it you want and how much are you willing to pay for it?" "I've got a leather jacket upstairs...Would you put it on?" "Just put it on?" "I'll go and get it." He leaves the horror hole and returns a few minutes later holding a leather flying jacket with a lambswool collar. There are tears in the jacket's sleeves, and the lambswool is yellow with age. John Wayne could've worn it in one of those crappy war films he made. "Put it on," the guy says. I give him a spiky smile and put on the jacket. "Okay, where's the plane, and what time's take-off?" "Drop your jeans and turn around.

Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? I mean, I’ve always felt like the Katherines dump me right when they start to see what I look like from the inside—well, except K-19. But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?

Everything changes, sweetheart. The universe loves to happen.

Do you think we can be friends?” I asked. He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.

Each time that I have felt like I might finally be figuring some things out, life has decided to change the rules and I’ve had to start all over again.

Even though their marriage had been dead for over two years (her words, not mine), this put her in the role of the innocent. She was now a woman scorned. ~Shattered Reality

Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.

Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.