“When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever.”
Tobias Wolff
more infosource: This Boy’s Life (New York: Grove Press, 1989), 286.
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category: adolescence, aging, dream, innocence, youth
medium: Memoir
“Rimbaud was like my boyfriend. If you’re 15 or 16 and you can’t get the boy you want, and you have to daydream about him all the time, what’s the difference if he’s a dead poet or a senior?”
Patti Smith
more infosource: “Patti Smith” interviewed by Thurston Moore, BOMB magazine, issue 54, Winter 1996.
category: adolescence, daydream, love, Rimbaud, teenager
medium: Interview
via: Karin Schaefer“I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of, like the YA equivalents of The Maltese Falcon and Strangers on a Train. Weirdly, then, reading YA stuff now is a little like being a young adult way back then: Is this Vonnegut guy any good? What about Albert Camus? Anyone ever heard of him? The world suddenly seems a larger place.”
Nick Hornby
more infosource: “October 2007,” in Shakespeare Wrote for Money (San Francisco, CA: Believer Books, 2008), 81–82.
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category: adolescence, book, reading, teenager, YA
medium: Essay
“Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group—these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.”
David Brooks
more infosource: “Amy Chua Is a Wimp,” The New York Times, January 17, 2011.
category: adolescence, sleepover, socializing
medium: Op-Ed
“I love Peter as I’ve never loved anyone, and I tell myself he’s only going around with all those other girls to hide his feelings for me.”
Anne Frank
more infosource: The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition, ed. by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler and trans. by Susan Massotty (New York: Random House, 1995), 16.
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category: adolescence, diary, love, romance, teenager, World War Two
medium: diary
“Lola Shisbe had never wrecked a railroad in her life. But she was just sixteen and you had only to look at her to know that her destructive period was going to begin any day now.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
more infosource: The Crack Up (New York: New Directions, 2009) [reprint], 138–39.
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category: adolescence, destructive, rebellion, teenager
medium: notebook
“I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don’t have to be someone special or anything special to achieve something amazing. You’ve just got to have a dream, believe in it, and work hard.”
Jessica Watson
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adolescence