Coming Of Age Quotes - Page 6

What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore.And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.

And the One will reveal the Bow of the Southern Star and conquer the enemy with courage and fine judgment. The sight of the One is true and the enemy cannot hide. Griffon will fly

We laughed as we ducked behind a pile of snow. Then our brothers came charging through the barrier, sending the four of us sliding down a white slope full of cherished memories.

Time' is the most threatening four letter word.

That could also be because at one point during the film, our hands found each other. And when I felt Michael's middle finger caress the inside of my palm, it sent a tickle up my spine, and the fingers of my right hand were soon exploring his left hand, and we each took turns tracing the contours of the other's hands.

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

You'll never have to fend for yourself like that, Lincoln. You never have to be alone. Why would you want to?"He leaned back against his bedroom wall and slunk down until he was sitting on the cast-iron radiator. "I just...," he said. "Just?""I need to live my life.""You aren't living your own life now?" she asked. "I certainly never tell you what to do.""No, I know, it's just...""Just?""It doesn't feel like I'm living my own life.""What?""It feels like, as long as I stay home, I'm still living your life. like I'm still a kid.""That's silly," she said."Maybe," he said.

Everything changes, sweetheart. The universe loves to happen.

Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity.

It was almost painful to be different.

I was always on guard and I was always prepared for him to be upset with me. I had lived feeling uneasy and tense for so long.

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.

What had those vile creatures unleashed in me? What beast had they awakened? I think I vowed to kill the beast and bury it so deep in the abyss it would never again rear its ugly head. Part of me did make this promise. The other part embraced an unfolding of life’s inextinguishable flames and the mind’s unspoken bondage.As far as reinforcing the strength of my mind’s resolve, I supposed my body was a useless entity. Rather, it was this fancy thing I lived in—a mausoleum that beckoned the living, promising gratification, refuge, solace, peace, even immortality. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t mine. I realized then, it had never belonged to me. I could control what happened to it only if people were merciful. Watching Valentin was not merciful. It was a torturous joy.

A hothouse flower trained to bloom out of season and in the wrong climate. I do not belong.

Paradoxically, the more Michael kept me at a distance, the more I trusted him - perhaps because he was always willing to help me with tips and introductions even though he wanted absolutely nothing from me (and never reciprocated my nosiness with personal questions of his own with me).

Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.

I was the luckiest girl. Don’t you think because I didn’t have no proper man or husband I was anything else. Wasn’t no place I’d rather be than right there. Even now, I pine for that uncomfortable rock. Because he was watching over me and loneliness was some far off thing, echoing off the Rock from other folks. Wasn’t nothing could ruin it for me.

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.

Neither of us fit in, so instead we fit together.

I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that adults in my life didn't know anymore than I did.

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

Samir loves Joe’s face. He studies it every day in class: a face as old as his own but already, in eighteen years, the cli s and hills and odd proportions of its geography have been shaped by life’s weather. Samir likes to observe the ever-watchful green eyes, hidden in their shadowy alcoves over the at nose and cheekbones, and the heavy brow that scrunches up with Joe’s moods – all those sculptural planes could have been carved by Easter Islanders. en there’s the pout of his lips, the pucker of their concentration or the twist of their anger. But most of all, Samir examines the thoughts as they cross the wide-open landscape of the face. Tries hard to read their cloud shapes from the merest shadow.

You were just a young girl not wanting to let on that death could happen to one who hadn't even lived yet.

I’ll be like Esther. Your daughter.”“You ain’t that strong.

I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.

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

Oh yes, he's seen the black pupils of time's eyes. Two dark drains in a pair of dirty gas station bathroom sinks. The faucet's open and he's gurgling down the pipes, gushing toward whatever tank he's bound to swirl around in for the rest of his life. There's no telling from here if that's a realm of purification or of shit. There's only one way to find out, and that's to ride it all the way down.

Being a child sucked. Being a teenager was worse. And being an adult seemed so far away that I had a better chance at swimming the length of the ocean than growing up.

When you find the one, when you share the spark of kismet, then it becomes inconceivable to walk through life with anyone else.

I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.

I know more about my father than I used to know: I know he wanted to be a pilot in the war but could not, because the work he did was considered essential to the war effort… I know he grew up on a farm in the backwoods of Nova Scotia, where they didn’t have running water or electricity. This is why he can build things and chop things… He did his high school courses by correspondence, sitting at the kitchen table and studying by the light by a kerosene lamp; he put himself through university by working in lumber camps and cleaning out rabbit hutches, and was so poor he lived in a tent in the summers to save money… All this is known, but unimaginable. Also I wish I did not know it. I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

Have you ever noticed how as an adult, all the bright colors go out of your life? Now that I’m not a kid anymore, things always look gray, like a clothesline draped with laundry that’s been washed too many times and left to stand in the wind. I guess that’s what growing up is… it’s a fading photograph.

...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin]

Happiness comes in many forms. Whether through a passion for something or someone, it makes no difference. The results are the same: you live.

He tilted my chin up and I swear those lips are magic. Witchcraft. Sorcery. Whatever it is in those lips, it’s addictive. Unassailable. I had to have more. More of this feeling of being wanted.

My parents won’t let me have a motorcycle, but they give me all the guns I want. I asked them for a motorcycle last Christmas and they told me I’d only kill myself. They got me this twelve-gauge instead.

Don't make me sit through reality.

The rain landed on my skin with a barely audible patter and changed the tempo of its repetitive dance, letting the wind change its course and angle. The cold soon seeped through my dress and into my bones. An iris from my garland fell in my lap.

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank.

A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle.

I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…

I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.

We're about to hit that age when we'll be too exhausted to maintain friendships, and the days of hanging out will be long behind us.

For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.

Flora went to the cinema every day that week. She saw the same movie each day, and wore the same dress.

No one can steal your freedom from you. You can only give it away.

I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.

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

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame...

She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side of the line outside of girlhood. It is a dress that says something big in a very quiet way; it is a dress that is talking to Alice right now, a dress that is making her feel possibilities never before considered, the possibility of perfume and pretty and dancing and boys. This dress is who she might be, only more so.

She didn't want to be considered a woman yet, wasn't ready to be the recipient of jewelry from men.

My memories from this period are often nebulous. They bend and warp like clouds caught between two fronts. A lot of terrible things happened to me that I try not to remember, but I was a child, I was innocent, and I used to be happy sometimes. ”Excerpt From: Life of a Bastard Vol. 1 By Damien Black

I lost my innocence very young and it had nothing to do with sex.

Mama and I sat on a burping bus full of chickens in cages, and round-eyed babies on round mothers' laps. (The Pinata-Maker's Daughter)

You see, there is a major downfall to living in a tourist town. You guessed it, the constant turnover of new people. You cannot really connect with anyone because no one is ever here for more than two weeks every year, if they comeback at all. The intruders never thought about what happens once they leave. ~ Stella

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

I was a late bloomer. I was still naïve about what 16 year olds today have known for years. I remember sitting up and taking notice—of the world, my body, others—in a way never before experienced. I noticed boys, or rather they noticed me, at 16.

I knew that Jessie and I were going to be okay; I knew we were all going to be okay. And I had faith that wherever our individual paths led us would be exactly where we were always meant to be. For a girl that had never believed in anything, this realization meant everything.

On evenings, I spent the entire study period reading....From that time on, the world began to broaden around me, beyond any tangible limits. The world, as portrayed in those works destined for young people, was divided in two: an ordinary, everyday world, brutal and unresponding to desires, and a spacious, logical world, about all kind, interesting and desirable. Wasn't the very act of reading a pleasure more substantial than that of playing or eating, for instance, even when one was starved?