“In your twenties, if you have any amount of complexity in your childhood, or any trauma that you haven't dealt with, it comes out. That's why you have a lot of artists that don't make it through.” IfsArtistChildhoodHavensAmountTwentiesTraumaYour ChildrenComplexity Author:Jeremy Sisto
“I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.” ShouldWritingFirstsAgeNovelCuttingChildhoodMaterialsTwentiesValuableTeethCraftsFiftySixtyAutobiographyTwenty OneYoungsters Author:Laura Z. Hobson
“A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew.” YearsChildhoodTwentiesAdolescenceTwenty One Book:Conversations with Ian McEwan Source: Conversations with Ian McEwan
“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.” MenNeedsYearsLittlesSoulStatesReasonMotherAnimalChildhoodCenturyPureEternityTwentiesStructureMaturityInstantThirtyVegetablesWombEarly Childhood Book:The Portable Voltaire Source: The Portable Voltaire
“This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel.” YearsGirlQualityBoysChildhoodStrangeTwentiesDreamerDistinguishedEccentricBrothels Author:Mikhail Bulgakov
“Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?” ThinkingWantFeelsWritingYearsStillsI CanHardDreamHurtBehindsSilenceChildhoodDyingCryWindRiversTwentiesPressureLeavingWaveScaredPityBoatYour DreamsChestsBowsI Want YouIt HurtsFrontiersTwenty OneRainyOld YouSqueezingFeel Like Dying Book:The Things They Carried Source: The Things They Carried
“Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.” YearsLongSchoolChoicesNamesFiveFourChildhoodNeededLateTwentiesUniversityAffairForgottenThirtyFive YearsTeensLeavers Author:Ian Mcewan
“I'd always had a childhood ambition to go into the investment capital business, and spent twenty-odd years in it. But the thought of spending the second half of my career in the same business was boring, so I looked around for other opportunities .” YearsOpportunityBusinessHalfCareersChildhoodAmbitionTwentiesInvestmentInvestingBoringSpendingBoredOdd Author:Chris Corrigan