Quotessence
Home / Topics / Coming Of Age Quotes

Coming Of Age Quotes

Browse 926 quotes about Coming Of Age.

Related topics

Coming Of Age Quotes

“The headlights of parked cars shone through the rain, and the sidewalks extended, empty, into the darkness. Underground, the sewers surged like rivers, and a few blocks away, sirens blared. He was no longer aware of his heart or thoughts, only the image of a sunken face staring up from a well, the paleness rising through the water like polished bone. A ringed hand reached toward it, but as the fingers approached, the face would sink away, its eyes opening, closing, and the droplets of red falling like leaves. He was a child running through an autumn cemetery, leaping over cast iron fences, the rain bleeding into the tombstones and the roofs of the mausoleums, his legs following the wings of a crow, flapping to the north. A hedge of withered roses stood between him and his childhood house. He tripped and grazed his cheek on a manhole, his red blooming in the water. The sun set behind the hill; the house turned black—abandoned and derelict—and Chris knew he had to keep running, ahead, into the unknown.”

“Since we were college students when we were together, all of our dates took place in the confines of our tiny town. We never went farther afield. We just did laps around town, as if we were playing an endless game of Monopoly. And yet we were never bored. We’d meet at the library after class and go to a movie; then we’d go to our usual café and talk. After that we’d go back to her place and make love. Every once in a while she’d pack lunch for us and we’d take the tram to the spot with the best view in town and have a picnic. It wasn’t anything too fancy or adventurous, but we were happy. It was all we needed.”

“Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it, and now I'm stuck observing these machinations or sex and status and dancing and parties and people sucking at each other under the bleacher seating like some kind of freak, when I'm not the freak; Rich is the freak. Clearly. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated, or I'm going to shoot myself in the head.”

“And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men's voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches. And he even proved it himself—the part of him that sometimes almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids.”

“Seems a lot of men never saw one such as me. A girl what could keep up and fight and ride and curse with the best of them. A girl what ain’t trapped in some dress or some house or some bed. A girl what ain’t waiting on some man to do what she ought to her own damn self.”

“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.”

“I’ve earned the right to steal a little makeup. Scientists have confirmed that humanity is highly suggestible. If I intend to escape the jaws of consumerism, I have some hard choices ahead. I won’t say that the Devil is behind this, but Gretchen goes to Catholic school, she says the Devil can show up anywhere, and we wouldn’t even recognize him. Last week Gretchen told me, watch carefully to see how one thing connects to another.”

“There were the signed, spiral-bound Spirit-in-the-Woods yearbooks from three summers in a row and the aerial photograph of everyone at camp the second summer. In it, Ethan's feet were planted on Jule's head, and Jule's feet were planted on Goodman's head, and so on and so on. And didn't it always go like that-body parts not quite lining up the way you wanted them to, all of it a little bit off, as if the world itself were an animated sequence of longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success, a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn't stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting.”

“I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.”

“Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.”

“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.”

“Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?”

“I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.”

“Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.”

“I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.”

“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.”

“Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.”

“I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.”

“I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.”

“I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.”

“I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.”

“I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied.”

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

“I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…”