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Coming Of Age Quotes

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Coming Of Age Quotes

“Despite the intensity of the moment, I felt no fear, and when I looked down, I knew why. Lisa had grabbed my hand in hers, and locked her eyes on me, stoic, in that moment of terror; eyes filled with neither panic nor worry, but beautiful acquiescence, as a silent apology passed between us. It filled me with love and peace as our friendship flashed before my eyes, and then everything went dark, and silent.”

“Given what you went through and to be standing here now…I’d say you’re stronger than you even know.” “Why do you have such faith in me?” “I’ve always believed in you. You just have to believe in yourself. If there is something in your mind that you’ve forgotten and need to remember, you’re going to find it.” “What makes you so sure?” “Because you,” he smiled. “Us. We are the light. There is nothing brighter.”

“Every challenge we’ve faced…every turn life has thrown at us…I’m reminded of the lessons I learned in those stories. Lessons of fate and destiny and how the impossible is worth fighting for, no matter how long it takes. But the biggest thing I learned,” he paused and swallowed, “and also, the most relevant…is that in all of the universe, there is only one moon. And you, Alaina Elizabeth Thomas, are my moon. You are my destiny. You are, my Arabian Nights. I am so thankful that in all the stories of the world, you chose to be mine.”

“The rhythmic motion of the silent paddlers carried her, with a sense of inevitability, to her new life as she heard the Twin Otter take off behind her. There was no turning back now, and Connie gripped the sides of the canoe, her heart beating and her hands sweating.”

“I picked up a fallen branch and struck a tree with it. Apples fell from the tree. The rope around one of the skeletons gave way and it fell to the ground. It lay there, crumpled and bent in ridiculous angles. I wondered if the person who the skeleton used to live inside would be embarrassed if he or she could see themselves now. I looked around the area but didn’t see any ghosts. Why would I see a ghost? They didn’t exist. Still, I looked a second time.”

“When you grow up, what are you going to be? A doctor, an engineer, a mechanic, what? A fisherman trawling his net in the sea? Better choose, don’t want to leave any door shut But aren’t we all too young to decide? I need more time, to think, to live, to learn, I promise I’m not taking the system for a ride, It’s just my future path I can’t discern. So now I’m back to try once more. Grade twelve, part two, gonna give it a go. It is your patience I must implore, I promise I won’t just play Nintendo. Because it’s not that I don’t give a crap. I just really need to take a victory lap.”

“Kids who, I hope, have a couple years left before they have to think about what they’ll be like at seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, expected by parents and teachers and politicians and everyone else to have everything figured out—but on the authority figure of the day’s terms, not their own. If these kids are trans, queer, or people of colour, how many of their nights are already spent curled up and defeated on the couch?”

“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.”

“When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She kept planting seeds even thought nothing would grow. She just kept trying.' 'I don't understand.' 'Because you can't.' 'What does this have to do with anything?' I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son.”

“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.”

“You know one day, you're going to look back on these days. And everyone you went to high school with will either be getting married to each other, shitting out kids, or dropping dead like flies," when she spoke, Miss Jenson sighed at the end of every few words; she must have been narrating her own thoughts she might have otherwise kept to herself, "and everything you never did, you'll never be able to even try.”

“People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking "not much has changed" is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back.”

“But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing "catches," and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I 'want'.”

“In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.”

“I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape.”

“And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.”