“All I wanted to do while I was a teenager was go out and play most of the time and just enjoy life and have fun. I wasn't big into school, you know, I look back now and wish I would have spent more time studying and enjoyed it more. It's not for everyone and I didn't enjoy it that much like going to school and studying - some stuff I did but some of it I didn't. My attention span wasn't there.” KnowsLooksPlayBigsWantedSchoolFunWishStuffEnjoyAttentionStudyEnjoyedTeenagerHaving FunMore TimeEnjoy LifeAttention Span Author:George Stults
“Reading about feminism when I was a teenager and seeing it as a young woman, I realized that feminism really hadn't dealt with sexuality; it really hadn't dealt with transgender or gay women.” ReadingFeminismGaySexualityI RealizedTeenagerYoung WomenTransgender Author:Lorna Simpson
“I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire musical life. Every mix tape I ever made had at least one Hip song on it. Right from the outset I feel like Gord Downie built so much room into his songs. There was so much space in them that he created. He made me think of songwriting as full of boundless possibilities in a way that - well, that a lot of songwriters do, but that was the first time I thought a song could really contain multitudes.” ThinkingSongPossibilityFirst TimeMusicalTeenagerSongwriting Author:John K. Samson
“Young women now, this generation - girls my age too, but even younger than I am - they're the ones that are going to change the world. They've grown up in such a new way of thinking about women and female empowerment. I grew up with a little bit of that, but teenagers now, those are the girls that are going to make the world a different place for everyone else.” ThinkingWorldDifferentAgeGirlFemaleEmpowermentTeenagerChanging The WorldYoung WomenDifferent Place Author:Lucy Hale
“I'd hope that the story A Dog's Purpose helps everyone reflect on how many different "lives" we all live - from children to teenager to adults to seniors - and how each phase of life presents new situations along the way to discovering our ultimate purpose.” ChildrenDifferentHelpingPurposeSituationUltimateTeenagerSenior Author:W. Bruce Cameron
“The messaging campaign that stigmatized the term feminist definitely worked on me when I was a teenager. I always believed in equality, but there's such intense pressure to be cool and not alienate boys, to not be a pain in the ass - to not be "that kind of woman."” KindPainTermBoysFeministIntenseAssTeenagerAlways BelieveBeing Cool Author:Lindy West
“We have to stop seeing the skin color. I believe that's the most powerful way to change mentalities and behavior. I had to stop seeing myself in such a limited way. I started doing that as a teenager, and here I am today, because of that. I believe that's the best way to change things for Black people.” PeopleBelieveTodayI BelieveBlackPowerfulBehaviorSkinsTeenagerMost PowerfulBlack PeopleMentality Author:Omar Sy
“When you're aware, from a young age, of how something plays in public, it makes you a young entrepreneur, whether you like it or not. I call most teenagers 'young entrepreneurs' because from a young age we're aware that our social media is building our brand. And if, when you're 13, you're concerned with building your brand, then "like" disparities matter.” AgeBuildingConcernedEntrepreneurSocial MediaTeenagerYou Like It Author:Yara Shahidi
“As a teenager growing up in Europe, I embraced the romantic ideal. For me, I had to give up the ideal that one person would be there for everything. Once you give up that ideal, then you begin to accept the person that you are with - the person who won't be able to give you everything and who won't be able to know exactly what you want and feel without you even needing to say it.” GivingAcceptingGrowing UpGiving UpTeenager Author:Esther Perel
“Millennials do not know their country at war. They don't see militant Islam as evil. They don't see Islamic terrorism as evil. If they're 30, 911, 2001, they were teenagers, there's been so much propaganda about that. The United States largely has been blamed for these acts of terror, presidents like Bush with their torture have created terrorists and so forth. They've really been given a dose of anti-Americanism, well, I think since they first started going to school but it intensified once they got to high school and college.” ThinkingWarCountrySchoolEvilPresidentCollegeHigh SchoolIslamTerrorTerrorismTerroristTeenagerPropagandaTortureIslamicMilitant Author:Rush Limbaugh
“Since I was a teenager, I had wanted to come to the United States to establish my name as a writer and to establish my freedom. As a writer and artist, I cannot do anything without freedom. For me, freedom is just like the air or water. I cannot write without freedom.” WritingArtistWaterTeenager Author:Osama Alomar
“I'm really lucky to have my brother because I know a lot of teenagers, and even adults, aren't as close to their siblings. Working in Hollywood definitely does bring us together and gives us something to connect on. I had an audition yesterday and he came by before and ran my sides with me. Being able to work on things together is really cool and it gives us something to have in common.” GivingTogetherCommonBrotherLuckyTeenagerRanMy BrotherSiblingReally Cool Author:Ellery Sprayberry
“Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel. They'd be strange teenagers if they didn't. But cross-pollinating happens too - Aphex Twin did more interesting things with electronic music than most trained composers, who seemed to approach samplers with undue caution and reverence in those early days.” ImportantInterestingStrangeTeenagerReverenceComposerTwinsCautionElectronic MusicPopular Music Author:Jonny Greenwood
“I think that what I knew as a teenager, and what I rediscovered in my mid-forties, was - aside from the primacy of sexual desire and how strongly it rules me - this idea that we are lucky to feel something. Even if that something is sadness.” ThinkingDesireSadnessLuckyTeenager Author:Claire Dederer
“I was born on Halloween night, 2:00 am on November 1st, but still Halloween night in the USA. I think it was a destiny for me to work quite a bit in the horror genre. I love the horror genre. Since I was a teenager, my friends and I used to go to a video store and rent many horror movies that we would watch over the weekend and then scare each other at school. I've been fascinated with the horror genre all my life.” ThinkingSchoolNightDestinyHorrorTeenagerScareWeekendHalloweenNovember Author:Massimo Dobrovic
“The '80s just had this sense of outrageous fun coupled with great stories and characters. Then there's the practical effects and buckets of gore in movies. These are movies that, for the most part, still stand up to this day. But I guess the real reason for my love and obsession with this period is these were my first horror movies. I was a teenager during the '80s and I think spending that part of your life in that particular time really has an impact on you for the rest of your life.” ThinkingRealReasonCharacterFunHorrorObsessionTeenagerThis Day Author:Neil Marshall
“It's one of the reasons why Spider-Man: Homecoming is so exciting. Because it's a new genre for us, a new character, the first time that Spider-Man is in our cinematic universe and you can see what he was meant to be in the comics. He's such a young teenager in comparison to these other heroes. But I think, because we're film fans who go and see everything, it's much more natural that you're inspired by other work. And then of course that influences your work, and the way you make films.” ThinkingReasonCharacterFilmUniverseNaturalInfluenceHeroFirst TimeExcitingInspiredTeenagerComparisonMeant To BeHomecoming Author:Kevin Feige
“We seem to be keeping old fans and are bringing on new fans that are teenagers. I think that is amazing. When I was a teenager, that was when I fell in love with music. It affected me in a deep way. That's why I love having teenagers at our shows.” ThinkingTeenager Author:Alan Cooper
“If we recover something like a functioning, well-informed democratic polity - if it hasn't been wrecked for good by the people who are getting in now, if millennials and teenagers can come to maturity in a world where we hold free and fair elections and agree on what fact is - Lin-Manuel Miranda is going to have a lot to do with that.” PeopleWorldElectionAgreeDemocraticTeenagerMaturityMiranda Author:Stephen Burt
“The actor's life, but also the Australian's life. We're wanderers. We like to walk about - we're curious people. I have felt that since I was a teenager.” PeopleCuriousTeenager Author:Rose Byrne
“Right now one in three teenagers meets the medical criteria for addiction, which is scary. I'm so driven because when I walked into rehab, I was like, "Am I still drunk? Did the guys give me the wrong address? Am I at a summer camp?" And it kills them. Deaths attributed to drugs and alcohol have overtaken all other emergency-room deaths.” GivingGuyDrugSummerAddictionScaryAlcoholDrivenMedicalDrunkTeenagerSummer Camp Author:Kristen Johnston
“Teenagers are always sneaking around in drawers where they shouldn't go and reading things they shouldn't be reading. And that's an attempt to try, I think, to penetrate, that's how I found out as a teenager what was going on, was by sneaking into drawers and reading letters that I had no business reading.” ThinkingTryingReadingTeenager Author:David Small
“I think we all feel incredibly fortunate and grateful that we're still around. We're one of the last punk-rock bands standing. And, to be honest, if we weren't getting paid well, and there weren't these teenagers coming to see it and saying, "... this is good, these guys play hard," we probably wouldn't do it.” ThinkingGuyHonestGratefulTeenagerBeing Honest Author:John Doe
“As a teenager and into my early twenties I lived in a geodesic dome on a mountain. No running water, no phone, real rustic. I loved it. One night, there by myself, I was terrified. I was up in the loft trying to sleep but I couldn't because I was so scared to be that alone. I knew I'd never lose my fear if I didn't address it so I went outside in my undies and waited for the darkness to come and kill me. But it didn't. It was beautiful and calm and even kind. I went back to bed eventually.” TryingKindRealRunningBeautifulNightWaterSleepDarknessMountainCalmScaredTeenagerKill Me Author:Samantha Hunt
“We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.” DesireBrainTerribleInstinctBusyTeenagerMaturityDeath PenaltyImpulsive Author:Jonathan Haidt
“Now social media is a centerpiece of our lives. It can be a useful tool for connection and communication. It can ease the isolation that so many people feel in the modern world. But like anything that is powerful, it can have a bad side. As adults, many of us are able to handle mean words, even lies. Children and teenagers can be fragile. They are hurt when they are made fun of or made to feel less in looks or intelligence. This makes their life hard and can force them to hide and retreat. Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough, especially to children and teenagers.” PeopleWorldMeanChildrenLyingCultureFunHurtPowerfulModernCommunicationSocial MediaTeenagerIsolationRough Author:Melania Trump
“Most of the theater I've done in the past was when I was a kid or a teenager so it feels like being a kid again. I'm happier than I've ever been. You really get to go to work every day and play, and try different things. I don't know, I've never felt so lucky to do this job. So I hope to do a lot more theater.” TryingDifferentDoneKidsPastLuckyTeenagerSo LuckyBeing A Kid Author:Alexis Bledel
“I think most people get hit by the music first and you can be singing along and realize a song has this melancholy feel. As Swedes, I think we see a beauty in melancholy. You're heartbroken, you're looking out the window and you feel really at ease in the pain. I have so many memories as a teenager with music, sad music, but I was just so into it.” PeopleThinkingPainSongRealizingMemoriesSingingWindowTeenagerMelancholyHeartbroken Author:Yukimi Nagano
“Nirvana really touched me as a teenager and started making me pay attention to music as a participatory thing that I could do. Music that you want to throw your body into it - that's a feeling that I'm not quite satisfied with having made yet.” FeelingsAttentionTeenagerPay Attention Author:Phil Elvrum
“At first I was thinking of it as superheroes who happened to be teenagers. Then I realized, no, I'm writing about teenagers who happen to be superheroes. Thinking like that changed everything for me. I started approaching the stories through the characters' core emotions, rather than leading with the superpowers.” ThinkingWritingEmotionChangedI RealizedTeenagerSuperheroSuperpower Author:Lisa Yee
“I was a teenager when General Zia took power in the Pakistan; I was in my twenties when I went there during the late 1980s and I saw then not only the novel punishments that he was introducing - because they were novel, and this is again something that's very important to understand, it's only in the last thirty, forty years, since 1979 in fact, that these penalties have been revived anywhere in the world apart from Saudi Arabia.” WorldImportantNovelTeenagerFortyIntroducing Author:Sadakat Kadri
“I think teenagers just don't have the persistence to pretend to like something they don't anymore. I used to do that - make myself like stuff that didn't immediately appeal to me. When you're 17 and checking out John Cage records from the library. It's not like it's got the hooks of a Ramones record, or a Beach Boys record. But at the same time, you're like, I know there's something in here that I'm supposed to understand. And then eventually you find it.” ThinkingBoysLibraryTeenagerBeachPersistenceHookRamones Author:Bradford Cox
“I haven't got many tattoos, but the two that are most important to me are music tattoos. I have a black heart with a lightning bolt down the middle. And the black heart was for Manson and the lightning bolt down the middle was for David Bowie. I have black diamond with circles that keep swirling and swirling, and it's surrounded by sort of crazy diamonds because Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" really inspired me, and everybody's called me Crazy Diamond since I was a teenager, so it was always important to me.” HeartImportantBlackCrazyShiningInspiredTeenagerDiamondTattooManson Author:Evan Rachel Wood
“I started singing when I was a teenager. I always wanted to write songs; I just didn't understand how someone could sing without writing their own songs.” WritingSongSingingTeenager Author:Olivia Merilahti
“Women are dealing with the same thing: they're dealing with expectations about how they're supposed to look and how they're supposed to interact with men. I think we're all trying to figure it all out, especially when we're teenagers, but I think the key is to listen and empathize with one another.” ThinkingMenTryingExpectationsTeenager Author:John Legend
“I genuinely am sort of an emotionally stunted man-child, so if I just write to the top of my intelligence, it sounds like a teenager. I like being around teenagers. It's good for drama; they feel everything much more intensely than adults do, their lives are much more interesting than ours. They're mutants. They have these weird bodies that are rebelling against them and changing every day. Teenagers always equal good drama.” WritingInterestingDramaEqualTeenager Author:Brian K. Vaughan
“I know most people don't like to be around teenagers but I do. I'm one of the only people I can think of who can't wait for my kid to be a teenager. I think being a teenager is one of the most wonderful things in the world. I really enjoyed it - just this heightened emotional state where everything is beautiful and everything is new and you're convinced that you're really going to break the mould and be different from your parents. And the best part is that you have so much more time that you didn't have as a child.” PeopleThinkingWorldChildrenDifferentKidsBeautifulWaitingParentBreakWonderfulEmotionalTeenagerBeing A Teenager Author:Diablo Cody
“Boy George of course, was my idol as a teenager. I haven't photographed him, even though I know him now. He wants the pictures to be retouched, and I don't want that.” BoysTeenager Author:Wolfgang Tillmans
“I did take guitar lessons as a teenager, though, and I started to teach myself how to play everything I could play on the guitar on piano, so I had a really weird, non-traditional route to proficiency. I think it probably helped me come at things from a new angle.” ThinkingTeachTeenagerReally Weird Author:Rostam Batmanglij
“I was born in a little village in the south of Holland called Mierlo. It was great growing up in Mierlo. It's a lovely little town where you can run around in the streets and climb trees and all that stuff when you're a kid. Then, when you're a teenager, it's not so fun. But I moved to Paris when I was very young.” RunningKidsFunGrowing UpTreeMovedLovelyTeenager Author:Lara Stone
“I literally feel like books saved my life. I found these people. Me reading Camus and Kafka, all of the tortured teenager stuff of someone who's falling in love with books. These people, these writers had the questions. They may not have had the answers, but they're not afraid to look at the questions head on. It was just life-changing for me. Yeah, books, honestly, I can't even tell you. I feel saved by books; I feel like they let me be who I was and find the world I wanted to be in.” PeopleWorldBookFallReadingLet MeFalling In LoveHonestlyTeenagerNot Afraid Author:Nathan Englander
“There's a thing in the U.K., particularly in London, where it's kind of the idea of subculture and counterculture and the outside and the idea that it's great to be a freak and the freak always wins. So I think English girls are a lot less scared of being the freak or looking like an idiot. To be the outsider is actually a great thing in England. I don't know - I'm not American. But I think the majority of American teenagers don't want to be the freak.” ThinkingKindGirlWinningScaredGreat ThingsTeenagerIdiotFreakOutsiders Author:Edie Campbell
“It was not easy when I was a teenager. But today, with the new technology, with the Internet, everybody can do prostitution with two clicks. During the period of Belle du Jour, it was a very strong decision to go into the profession, but now, if you need a little bit money, you go on a website and you say, "Can I have 50 dollars?" It's easy! I wanted to show these facilities.” TodayStrongEasyDecisionTechnologyInternetProfessionTeenagerVery StrongWebsiteNew Technology Author:Francois Ozon
“I knew I liked art. I knew I liked photography. I remember seeing photos of Linda Evangelista in Italian Vogue as a teenager, and at the time I didn't know who she was. There were two photos - one shot by Fabrizio Ferri and another one by Steven Meisel. I didn't know who any of those people were. I think it was the first summer I was modeling, I saw these magazines sitting out and looked at them. I remember thinking, These are the kind of images I want to make.” PeopleThinkingKindArtRememberSummerPhotographyTeenagerItalianModelingVogue Author:Amber Valletta
“I think something that happens when you grow a bit older is you become slightly less overly emotional. Obviously when you're young or a more progressed teenager, you're overly emotional, so that side of me calmed down. I wanted to write more about stories, and other things that I'd observed and seen or done.” ThinkingWritingDoneEmotionalTeenager Author:Elly Jackson
“I always tell people what I did 50 years ago as a teenager is now 4,000 times easier to do today than when I did it. Technology breeds crime - it always has and it always will. There's always going to be people willing to use technology in a negative, self-serving way. So today it's much easier, whether it's forging checks or getting information. People go on Facebook and tell you what car they drive, their mother's name, where you are going on vacation, where you've been on vacation. There's nothing you can't research in a matter of a couple of minutes and find out about someone.” PeopleTodayTechnologyCarCrimeCoupleNegativeTeenagerVacation Author:Frank Abagnale
“My mom was a cheerleader and had me as a teenager. I remember her giving me some pom-poms and teaching me how to do some splits when I was 3 or 4.” GivingRememberTeachingMomMy MomTeenagerCheerleader Author:Christina Milian
“I've always known that I wanted to be an actor. My family kind of was a theatrically inclined family. My father came to New York when he was a young man to be an actor and he, over a course, was in a couple Broadway musicals. I grew up in family where theater was always part of the vocabulary. By the time I was a teenager I was just totally obsessed, and it was the only thing I could imagine myself doing.” MenKindFatherImagineCoupleMy FamilyTeenagerObsessed Author:Peter Vack
“I remember back to my days as a teenager. When you get your feelings hurt, you feel that moment of embarrassment. You think: "No one wants to talk to me ever again. It's all over." I reassure people that's totally not the case. These bullies are just hateful people doing hateful things. Sometimes, it's a lesson in tough love, but you keep positive, smile in the face of hateful adversity and move on. It makes you a stronger person.” PeopleThinkingSometimesMomentsFeelingsRememberMovingHurtToughStrongerAdversityTeenagerBullyEmbarrassmentHatefulHurt FeelingsTalk To Me Author:John Cena
“I've been exploring gender performativity in the Gulf since I was a teenager. I'm not a gender anthropologist, but I feel like there's an extreme binary between femininity and masculinity in the Gulf. From a young age, I knew I didn't want to be part of it. Gender is a huge gray area, and the problem with defined roles is that they cover up undefined ones.” ProblemAgeGenderTeenagerExploringMasculinityFemininityBinaryUndefined Author:Ayshay